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The KING'S TRUMPET 



By JASPER SEATON HUGHES 



J\ FTER Twenty Silent 
jl^V Years the pathfinder 
^ comes out of the 
wilderness of Oriental ima- 
gery with the old divine truth 
fresh as tho' it had just fallen 
from trfe skies. 

"The truth that might have 
saved us is transferred from 
one generation to another 
dead as a stone till some one 
seizes it and strikes it into 
fire." 




The KING'S TRUMPET 




[COPYRIGHT] 



"By 



fStft 



Jasper Seaton Hughes 



Pilate: "Art thou a KING ?" 
CHRIST: " To this end was I born: 






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Copyright, 1921. 

Published by the author 

JASPER SEATON HUGHES 

Holland, Mich. 



OCT 15 1921 



©CU630621 



PRESS OF STANTON PRINTING CO. 
GRAND RAPIDS. MICH. 



'" ' ■ 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 



THE LUSITANIA. 

A thousand voices from the deep: "God, is thy will we 
sink in this sea?" 

Answer from the U boat Captain Schwiezer: "It is the 
command of heaven by order of the king." 

Civilization: "Whence this authority?" 

The Kaiser: "Let every soul be subject to the higher 
powers which are ordained of God. They that resist shall 
receive to themselves damnation." Paul, Rom. 13. 

A voice from heaven: "This is my Son. Hear ye Him." 

The last voice from heaven: "If any man hath an ear 
let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity goeth into 
captivity. He that killeth with the sword with the sword he 
must be killed. Here is the faith and patience of the saints." 
Revelation 13 :9. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 



"Whence comes it that the knowledge that might 
advance us, the thought that might save us is transferred 
from one generation to another as barren and dead as a 
stone till some one seizes it and strike it into fire ?" 

"To understand the intelligible with vehemence is not 
proper, but if you will incline your mind to apprehend it 
not too earnestly but bringing a pure and inquiring eye not 
as understanding some particular thing but with the flower 
of the mind. Things divine are not attainable by mortals 
who understand sensual things but only the light armed 
arrive at the summit." — Zoroaster. 

"The Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep 
sleep and hath closed your eyes (prophets and rulers and 
seers.) And the vision of all is become unto you as the 
words of a book that is sealed which men deliver to one 
that is learned, saying 'read this I pray thee' and he saith 
I can not for it is sealed ; and the book is delivered to him 
that is not learned saying, 'read this I pray thee' and he 
saith I am not learned." Isa. 29:10;-12. 

"I have many things to say to you but you can not bear 
them now." — Jesus. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 



THE RIDDLE. 

The Riddle? The mystery of two thousand years what 
is it? 

"The Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to him 
to show to his servants," His servants, who generally con- 
fess it has not yet been shown to them. 

In this hour of the Philistine feast of war and world 
wreck the new Sampson's riddle remains inert, shorn of 
its authority. It is about as it was in the hands of the 
ignorant monks of the eleventh century, its claims not 
allowed. 

It is the last word from "the lion of the tribe of Judah." 
"Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong 
came forth sweetness." "Can any thing good come out of 
Nazareth?" How can the greatest Revelation be called 
the greatest mystery? By the schools called "the Apoca- 
lypse," a great word to sackcloth it? 

Does it not foretell it's own doom to be "killed by the 
beast that cometh up out of the pit of the abyss?" How 
then shall we find honey in this carcass ? 

The valedictory is hailed. "I am he that was dead and 
behold I am alive forever more and have the keys of death 
and Hades, write." Ch. 1 :17. 

Of the visions that ushered in the Christian religion only 
one was commanded to be written in a book as the will and 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 



purpose of God that it be shown to His servants. The bless- 
ing pronounced upon him who reads it's words of prophecy 
is doubled. 

Thousands have guessed at this oracle. Did they lack 
"the pure eye"? 

If we have created our Christian program out of the apos- 
tolic ministry it is the product of that lower middle between 
Christ's own ministry begun on earth and resumed by His 
message from heaven which should be as far greater than 
anything from His servants as He was greater than they. 




THE KING'S TRUMPET 



THE TIME. 

The time of the writing, the place of it, the writer and the 
persons to whom the writer addresses his message, lie at the 
beginning of any ancient writing. Other side lights give 
assistance in determining the mind of the spirit. 

The writer of the Revelation distinctly disclaims the 
authorship and says he was ordered to record what he saw 
and heard and regards himself as witness and scribe. 

For the present we assume the writer was John Zebedee, 
the last of the apostles, as with Andrew he was the first to 
enlist and was known as the old man called "the elder John," 
who, never called himself or any one else an "apostle," and is 
till this day called "the Bosom Disciple," and the time of the 
vision and the writing near the close of the first century and 
growing out of the persecution of Flavius Domitian the 
twelfth of the Roman Caesars. 

The time would be later than when Paul wrote of Christ 
saying, "He was seen of me last of all." Paul in giving 
the testimonies of the resurrection, said : "He was seen of 
Peter and then of the twelve and of five hundred brethren 
at once and after that of James, and last of all he was seen 
of me — also as one born out of due time !" Seen of Paul in 
vision that is revelation, not in his human person as the 
others had. Then the writer of second Peter speaks of the 
transfiguration as the place where God testified to the son- 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 



ship of Jesus but does not mention Paul's "last" nor the 
really last revelation, which was to John the exile. 

The time must have been later than the gospel, for it is 
hard to suppose that John, who was so painstaking to tell 
us all about all his close relations to Christ that he was first 
to follow and stood last at the cross and received Mary from 
the Master's own lips, that he outran Peter to the empty 
sepulcher, that he lay next to the Lord's bosom at supper, 
that he would so far forget this coming of Christ to him 
"last of all" as not to make any reference to it if it had 
already taken place when he wrote his gospel. On the 
other hand we are to see the Book of Revelation uses 
material found nowhere else than in the gospel which that 
same apostle is here assumed to have written. 

These are working postulates till we have come to see 
the place of John in his relations to the trumpet messengers 
and to the churches, and to Christ and to the Roman empire, 
where the person and the time and the meaning will be 
seen in the light of a higher and assuring observation of 
facts to the mind that can use the telescope, instead of the 
microscope ; that can use synthesis, which is creative, instead 
of analysis, which is destructive ; that can use algebra, not 
arithmetic ; that can read the oriental as well as the occi- 
dental mind. 

Enlarging the scope, we know that there was a disappoint- 
ment among the brethren of Paul; that the Lord did not 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 



come in the clouds of heaven as that apostle and the 
believers seem to have expected and their hopes took 
refuge in the words of Christ himself answering Peter's 
question when that apostle asked Him concerning John : 
"And what shall this man do ?" 

Christ answered : "What is it to thee if he tarry till I 
come ?" 

We are told that the rumor of these words spread abroad 
among the brethren. 

Was it not the keen disappointment at the failure to 
realize that coming for which they had looked and prayed 
and waited that gave zest to this new hope which arose con- 
cerning John that (he being now an old man) caused it to 
spread abroad and that Christ did indeed come to John in 
the clouds of heaven? Was not the last chapter of John's 
gospel written later than the gospel? Such is the appear- 
ance. Here the prophecy of the appearance centers in John 
as it had in Paul. Paul was an apostle, as he keeps telling 
us ; John was prophet, seer, scribe and clerk of the King's 
Trumpet. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 



AUTHORITY OF VISION METHOD. 

All the great new beginnings of Christian advancement 
were by vision. This is the only one commanded to be 
written and it rejects all additions and subtractions being 
complete in itself. 

It is the most select and painstaking of all the books of 
our Bible and quotes from none to establish its authority or 
to accredit itself to the reader. 

From the day that vision was taken over to rabbinism 
and the academy we have wandered visionless till even now 
when we talk so much about "men of vision." 

"Where there is no vision the people perish." 

Our gospel histories open with the vision of Zechariah at 
the altar in the temple and close with John in the isle of 
Patmos. 

The priest's mouth was closed till he wrote the name 
"John," greatest of the line of prophets. 

Here, too, are the visions of Elizabeth, and of Joseph, 
and of Mary, and the vision of the shepherds on the hills, 
and by vision was the order to take the young child into 
Egypt, and another to return on the death of Herod. 

There was the transfiguration that brought Moses and 
Elijah to witness for the sonship of the Christ on "the holy 
mount" and there the vision of the two angels who sat at the 
empty tomb to first announce the Resurrection. 

The day of Pentecost came in answer to prayer and 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 



there the announcement was made that in these last days 
according to Joel the Spirit should be poured out and "young 
men shall see visions." 

By vision, that is revelation, Peter was directed to go to 
the house of Cornelius to begin the gentile evangelism, and 
Cornelius himself had sent for Peter by the authority of 
vision. 

Paul and Ananias also had responsive and companion 
visions. Paul declared before a Roman court his vision and 
said: "I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision," and 
in his letters declared he had in vision seen Jesus Christ in a 
sense that made him equal to the other apostles as a witness, 
and this claim was allowed and supported by the entire 
council at Jerusalem when Peter had given vision as his 
authority for going to the house of Cornelius, an act which 
he justified in the presence of his Jerusalem critics, saying: 
"What was I that I could withstand God?" Upon these 
vouchers for the authority of the vision method, Paul was 
given letters to the believers certifying his apostolical 
standing. 

Under the spell of vision both Peter and Paul declared 
they did not know whether they were in the body or not. 

It was by vision, that is revelation, that Paul was con- 
verted, and by vision he went up to Jerusalem about the 
question of his apostolic authority to be there confirmed 
by the authority of vision. 



10 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

All his travels and preaching and letters rested upon his 
vision, and having been attended by Luke, an able biogra- 
pher (the beloved physician) his ministry was spread out 
over a wide frontage so that when Luther espoused the New 
Testament in support of his protest against popery he made 
Paul the protagonist of protestantism and Paul's Roman 
citizenship, which in so many cases had shielded him 
against his Jewish enemies and led him to write to believers 
in Rome urging that they "obey the powers that be", penned 
those lines which have ever since been quoted to justify such 
crimes as the late war begun in Luther's land. 

Our protestant churches, our colleges, our libraries, our 
governments, our civilizations, rest upon that vision of 
Paul on the road to Damascus. 

Luther, the monk, the reformer and scholar, belonged in 
a way to the priest and the rabbi, who were ever at war 
with the seer and the prophet, and so again as Christ had 
said, "The strong men seize the kingdom by force." 

Its latest great expression is the inter-church world 
movement, which, if it set out to require that the ministry 
must produce a college certificate, would put the ban on both 
Christ and his apostles. It was when the churches of Asia 
Minor had "heaped to themselves teachers" of the Baala- 
mite and Nicolaitan and Jezebel kinds crowding Christ out 
of the center of His own religion, even as the world powers 
had driven Him off the earth, that Christ resumed his 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 11 

teaching office, returned by His chosen method of vision, 
and in the clouds of heaven to reinstate himself in the center 
of His system, gave orders to John to write in a book and 
send to the churches the things he saw and heard under a 
twofold commission with the sanction of the eternal Spirit 
as having been given by God, who created the heavens and 
the earth, and in fulfillment of the prediction made to Peter 
concerning John's last days, "What is it to thee if he tarry 
till I come ?" — to John, who was pronounced by the learned 
men of Jerusalem an ignoramus from Gallilee. 

"The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." We 
can not read the book verse by verse, nor chapter by chap- 
ter, for the order is that of the Spirit, and John was no 
book maker. All the books of the world never plead so 
persuasively to "him that hath an ear to hear" as this. 

*It was by a vision of Alexander Campbell, son of Thomas Camp- 
bell, while a young man, when that youth was on his way to America 
and on ship board, he had a vision in which he foresaw his ship 
stranded, and rising - from his vision told the thing to his mother with 
her family coming to her husband in Virginia. It was in the afternoon 
of a hazy October day when the sea was in a dead calm. But in the 
night that followed a storm with all that he had seen in the vision fell 
upon the unhappy ship and there he saw exactly fulfilled what pre- 
monition had presented to him so assuredly that he had refused to 
unrobe to lie in bed, and when the storm had driven the ship upon a 
rock that pierced its hull and the main mast had been cut away, young 
Campbell sat upon it's stump and there and then vowed his soul to 
God that in view of the perfect fulfillment of his vision he would 
devote his life to the preaching of the gospel of Christ. He published 
"The Millennial Harbinger" and began a great religious movement, 
but he became a scholar and the rabbinical trend soon began to show 
itself, and now a body of people with a plentiful supply of colleges 
have so far fallen away from the vision of its origin that one never 
hears any mention from the pulpit or from the press about that vision 
upon which the movement was founded so far as Mr. Campbell was 
the founder. "Men of vision," empty phrase so often heard, seems 
to have reference only to material gains to "Big Finance." The vision 
days were gone and the Millennial Harbinger passed into oblivion again 
as at first. 



12 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

THE BOOK OF THE REVELATION. 

The book was a scroll. We read a book by pages from 
left to right and then we turn over a leaf, from right to left, 
and read down from the top to the bottom, but if it is a 
letter and a single sheet written on both sides our signature 
is at the bottom of the second page. If we make a scroll of 
such a sheet and read down and turn the scroll from us we 
will find ourselves trying to read the second page up side 
down. 

It was a scroll that John says he saw in the right hand 
of Him who sat upon the "great white throne." He says it 
was written inside and outside, which corresponds to our 
letters which are inclosed in the envelope and the address 
on the outside that directs it to its destiny, but in this case, 
between the inside and outside, there was a vast spiritual 
distinction. It is here (Ch. 5), one should begin to read 
the scroll. The greater message is written in the interior, 
and the letters which come first in the book seem to have 
come last in the order of time of the vision, as we write the 
last word on the envelope. The Fifth Chapter is in this 
view the place to begin to read. The Chapter Four which 
follows the letters to the churches belongs to the very last 
state. It is a scene of the end when all has been achieved 
and the setting is static. It is God's reclamation when Christ 
shall have accomplished all His work and delivered the 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 13 

Kingdom to the Father, Himself not appearing at all in this 
setting. 

The Revelation is a double. It comprises a general 
message to the churches consisting of the seven letters and 
this is what John saw written on the outside, and the writing 
inside, which was sealed with the seal of God, is called "the 
seven seals," as the spirit is called "the seven spirits," and 
the seven titles of God and of Christ as dictator of the let- 
ters, which were carried by the apostles in form only as "the 
seven messengers," the seven in all cases being primarily a 
sign or symbol of divinity and only incidentally a numeral, 
and not a numeral at all in most cases. 

This distinction of a double message lies at the founda- 
tion of the true interpretation of the vision. John himself 
literally bore the letters. Ch. 22:21. 

We never complain that those letters to the churches are 
beyond our understanding, and ministers at the last extrem- 
ity sometimes venture to preach from them, but always with 
reserve and to a doubting audience on account of the myste- 
rious sealed interior from which the minister shrinks, but 
almost never a sermon is heard from the message within. 
The failure to discern that the book is a double message 
would of itself, if there were no others, defeat every at- 
tempt to understand it or do justice to its claims. It is here 
above all other places we must "rightly divide the word of 



14 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

truth," to be "a workman who need not to be ashamed." * 
This dividing of the word has its rise in Christ's own 
method of teaching. To the multitude and the people in 
mass he spoke in parables and proverbs and dark sayings. 
And "without a parable spoke he not unto them." His 
disciples were moved to ask him, "Why speakest thou to 
them in parables?" and he answered them saying, "They 
have ears that cannot hear and eyes that cannot see and 
hardened hearts that cannot understand." But to you it is 
given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God." "All 
things that My Father hath given Me I make known to 
you." "I call you friends." "What you hear in secret in 
the ear you shall proclaim upon the housetops." The gospel 
of Matthew goes so far as to cite a prophecy that Christ 
would so teach, "I will open my mouth in parables. I will 
utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation 
of the world." 

That was the distinguishing characteristic of His teach- 
ing on earth and it was also His manner when He returned 
to regain his authority from the Roman teachers who were 
leading the churches into heathen bondage. Nothing could 
better show His true authorship than this, His own chosen 
method. To the churches he again speaks openly, but aside, 

*Victor Hugo when at the seaside in exile, after reading William 
Shakespear, said he was surprised that not one of the great English 
commentaries had observed the doubling or bifurcating of Shakes- 
peare's characters. Here is a major Hamlet and here a replica in a 
minor Hamlet, and here is a major MacBeth and here a minor, and so 
on of other leading characters. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 15 

as he did to His disciples on earth, "Now speakest thou 
plainly and no parable." 

Christ greatly heightened this distinction when He said, 
"Give not that which is holy to dogs nor cast your pearls 
before swine." 

He refused to speak to the vulgar crowd that wanted His 
sanction to stone the woman taken in sin and he dared to 
offer contempt of authority in a Roman court by silence and 
in His crucifixion "like a lamb dumb before his shearer 
opened not His mouth." The one great thing the day of 
Pentecost did for the apostles was to give them boldness 
against the corrupt rulers, the same kind that Paul regarded 
as the servants of God when they were His protectors 
against the Jewish mobs that followed His steps, but who 
slew all the apostles and Christ, the Master. These were in 
John's time at last, commanding the churches to worship 
the Roman emperor when Christ came in the clouds of 
Heaven to restore his cause by His servant John, of and 
concerning whom He had said to Peter, "What is it to thee 
if he tarry till I come ?" 



16 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

THE TWO MESSAGES. 

Let us make sure of the doubling method as the first 
step to a more sure and safe interpretation of the great 
vision. 

1. These two messages come under differently described 
commitments, orders or commissions. 

We meet with this double in the first chapter, where 
the two orders to write are different 1:11. "Write in a 
scroll and send to the seven churches which are in Asia 
what thou seest." "Write the things thou hast seen and the 
things that are and the things which shall come to pass 
hereafter." 1:19. 

The first is in the present tense and is directed to the 
churches and as a book, while the second covers the whole 
time, present, past and to "come to pass hereafter." 

In the first chapter John is rehearsing his experience, of 
which the Ch. 10 gives the original account. It is there 
these commissions are in the reverse order. 1. "And He 
said unto me, thou must prophesy again before the many 
peoples and nations and tongues and kings" ; then follows 
in highly figurative form the commission to write the seven 
letters to the churches. 2. "And there was given to me a 
reed like unto a rod and the Master stood saying, 'Rise and 
measure the temple of God and the altar and they who 
worship therein'." 10:11 ; 11:1. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 17 

These two commissions are separately carried out. In 
the Ch. 22:16, we read, "I, Jesus, have sent my messenger to 
testify these things to you in the churches, I am the bright 
and morning star." Ch. 14:6, "And I saw the messenger 
flying mid Heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach 
to them that dwell upon the earth to every nation and kin- 
dred and people and tongue." 

2. The letters to the churches pertained to the things 
then present and the things which were to "quickly" or 
shortly come to pass, "the things thou seest," present tense. 

But the greater message takes up the things "thou saw- 
est," the past, and the things "which shall come to pass 
hereafter." In the last chapter we find "come quickly," but 
the two last chapters belong to the letters to the churches 
and not to the interior, not to the sealed message. The time 
of the second message is marked by trumpets and the end is 
sworn to by the oath of God as to result from the sounding 
of the seventh trumpet, and as the fulfillment of all the 
promises which God had made to all the prophets. There 
is no "shortly to come to pass" in the sealed message, but 
the hitherto and "the hereafter." 

3. The letters to the churches are expressed in the cur- 
rent christian language of the times, which identifies the 
two last chapters as part of the letters which are proper 
literature and understandable, while the interior and sealed 
message is to be read more as we now read the moving 



18 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

picture show in signs and symbols and action. While the 
sealed book has many literary explanations to assist, so 
have the letters some dramatic parts. 

4. The open letters are definitely addressed to the 
churches in Asia Minor, both as separate and as one, and 
the individuals are addressed as overcomers; while in the 
greater message the persons spoken of are "the tribes and 
tongues and peoples and nations" in mass, but no nation 
distinguished from any other, nor can personal mention be 
found. 

5. The proper literal names are used in the letters to 
the churches such as Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, 
Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea, and Christ and John and 
Antipas are the proper names of persons, while the sealed 
message presents all its names as "Spiritually so-called." 
Ch. 1 1 :8 Sodom, Egypt, Armageddon, Euphrates and 
Babylon. Satan is called Appollion and Abbadon, and Christ 
is called Michael, and John's own name occurring five times 
does not once appear in the great sealed message. 

6. The messages to the churches are in the sign of 
"seven," that is, God is given seven names and Christ writes 
in seven titles as the dictator of the seven letters to the seven 
churches, and the Spirit is "the seven spirits," and the apos- 
tles are "the seven messengers," and there are the seven 
warnings and seven promises all in seven, while in the 
sealed message the sign is "four" — four horses on the earth, 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 19 

four winds that blow on the earth, and the four agents of 
evil who stand on the four corners of the earth; the same 
four are bound in the great river Euphrates, and the four 
living creatures as the lion, the calf, the man-faced beast 
and the eagle ; that is, they are the representatives of the 
"tribes, tongues, peoples and nations," and their time against 
the claims of Christ to be forever King is expressed in four 
signs as "the hour, the day, the month and the year." 

7. The attitude of Christ in dictating the letters to the 
churches is that He stands in the midst of the golden candle- 
sticks, Ch. 1 :13, and holds the seven stars, apostles, in His 
right hand and walks in the midst of the golden lamps, 
Ch. 2:1, bearing also the sword that comes out of His 
mouth. Very different from this it is when He comes to 
deliver the open scroll and great new commission to John, 
for now He comes down from Heaven, clothed with a cloud 
as was promised He should come "in the clouds of Heaven," 
and having set his right foot upon the sea and his left foot 
upon the earth in universal attitude, He lifted His right 
hand to Heaven and "swore" by the oath of God that when 
the seventh trumpet shall begin to sound then there shall 
be no more delay in fulfilling all that He had promised to 
the prophets. That was and is prediction. 

All things pertaining to the world, its people, its rulers, 
its time, its false worship, is expressed in the sign of "four." 



20 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

THEY ARE UNITED. 

There is a strong unity existing between the two mes- 
sages. 

The greatest of these is the common authorship and 
source and a structural bond in their being regular programs, 
the letters, and all having the "seven" sign dominating and 
a proper preface and proper conclusion and all are divided 
into groups of four and three. There are five full, regular 
programs and all bear the same form as we shall see. 

THE GROUPING OF THE LETTERS. 

These letters are of regular form and consist of the 
proper address, instruction greeting, and reproof, and the 
attention of the reader is invited very carefully to the two 
items that close these letters. The warning to "him that 
hath an ear to hear," and the promise to "him that over- 
cometh." The Hastings Bible Dictionary takes notice that 
three of these promises come directly from the Spirit, while 
the four come as from Christ direct, as from His own per- 
son. The dictionary says "no reason has been given." The 
reason is, however, great. 

It is exactly this little cunning cryptic sign that divides 
the letters, in form, into the two groups. The difference is 
that the three in which the Spirit makes the promise, and 
the four in which Christ in person delivers it, points to that 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 21 

exchange of office which took place by the ascension of 
Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit to take His place, 
which He spoke of at such length and is so prominent and 
peculiar to the gospel of John. 

When we find this same grouping in both the seals pro- 
gram and in the program of the trumpets we see the truth 
of this contention in a light so manifest that there can be 
no room for doubt. Here is a principle of order and organi- 
zation. Here in this fact is implied the ascension, which 
carries with it the resurrection and the day of Pentecost, and 
the descent of the spirit when the promise was realized. 
Thus we have the ministry of Christ expressed in two values 
lying across the day of Pentecost. It is in the first three of 
the letters that the Spirit leads in pronouncing the promise 
and it is in the four that follow, Christ pronounces it. Here 
is a reverse of the normal order of three groups, for in the 
two programs which follow, (that is the seals and trumpets) 
the groups are set four and three, which is normal as to 
time. The four comes first. That is caused by the position 
of John, for he stood on the hither side of the Pentecost at 
which time the exchange took place, and as we find two other 
programs beginning with Ch. 14 and which show the group 
of three coming first, we will have more consistent account 
of this change in those groups. We thus detect a base of 
historic order. 

These promises to him that overcometh are prophetic. 



22 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

"Be thou faithful until death and I will give thee a crown 
of life." This incident points to some very orderly and 
painstaking construction very far from a vagrant dream or 
mere ecstasy of emotion. It was the descent of the Spirit 
that gave to the apostles that strength of will that enabled 
them to testify with new power. 

Broadly speaking, this exchange of places of Christ and 
the Spirit was the descent of the Spirit according to the 
words of Christ, "It is expedient for you that I go away for 
if I go I will send the Spirit, who shall teach you all things." 
"The Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not 
yet been glorified." John 7 :37. 

All the processes halted and waited on that event for it 
was the order of the Spirit in the plan of redemption. This 
is a second instance of the disregard of chronological order 
for, as stated in point of time, the group of the four comes 
first in the seals and trumpet programs which are the major 
series as we shall see. In those two it means quality and 
value. Here in the letters it is conventional. 

This proper grouping of the different programs has a 
very informing result touching a doctrine current and irri- 
tant in our day. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 23 

LITERARY FORM. 

These letters have a faultless literary form and are 
even poetic and artistic. They raise in every reader's heart 
the most sanguine expectations of realizing its great prom- 
ises to "him that readeth" and to "him that overcometh." 
But it has never justified its appeal to "him that hath wis- 
dom" and "understanding." 

Having received the scroll from Him who sits upon the 
great white throne, Christ dictates the letters ; the Spirit 
advocates them, saying, "Let him that hath an ear hear what 
the Spirit saith to the churches." John receives them and 
records them and carries them to the churches with his own 
salutations. It was not as separate scrolls they were sent, 
but united in one embracement and with the general sealed 
message concerning the whole world for all the time till the 
end, end of beastly reign. 

The letters are united and chained together by the florid 
titles and insignia of the Christ's varying offices with each 
letter, and they close with the seven promises and warnings 
which exchange places as already noticed. Taking the 
church at Ephesus as example of the letter form we have: 

1. The address "To the messenger of the church at 
Ephesus." 

2. The Signature, "These things saith he that hath the 
seven stars." 



24 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

3. Acknowledgment, "I know thy works and thy toil." 

4. Instruction, "I have somewhat against thee because." 

5. Repentance, ''Repent therefore and do thy first 
works." 

6. Warning, "Let him that hath an ear hear what the 
Spirit saith." 

7. Promise, "To him that overcometh I will give." 

Thus our own Christ, who hath the many diadems, 
spreads his radiant banner at the heads of these messages 
and the eternal Spirit advocates them in a monologue, one 
in authority, but two as the witnesses in the last will and 
testament, and were put to death and in sackcloth, silent till 
the seventh, the King's trumpet time shall come. 

John says, "I am your brother and companion, and par- 
taker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and patience 
of Jesus, was in the isle that is called Patmos for the word 
of God and the testimony of Jesus." 

"I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind 
me a great voice as of a trumpet, saying what thou seest 
write in a book and send to the churches, and I turned to 
see the voice which spoke to me and, having turned, I saw 
the seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of them one 
like to the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the 
foot and girdled about the breasts with a golden girdle. His 
head and his hair were white, white as wool, white as snow, 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 25 

and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like unto 
burnished brass as if it had been refined in a furnace, and 
his voice was as the sound of many waters, and in his right 
hand he held his seven stars and out of his mouth proceeded 
a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the 
sun in its noonday strength and when I saw him I fell as a 
dead man at his feet. And he laid his right hand upon me 
and said, Tear not, I am the first and the last and the 
Living One, and I was dead and behold I am alive forever 
more, and have the keys of death and hades.' " 

Christ explained the golden candlesticks to be the 
churches and the stars he explained to be his messengers, the 
same concerning whom He said, "My sheep hear my voice 
and I know them and they follow me and I will give unto 
them eternal life and they shall never perish and no one 
shall snatch them out of my hand." Ch. 10:25. In His 
hand as He "walks amid the golden candlesticks." 

If these messengers had been men on earth, what were 
they about to be allowing Balaamite and Nicolaitan and 
Jezebel, teachers, leading the churches astray? Had they 
no responsibility nor were in any way to blame for the con- 
dition of the churches ? They pass without praise or blame 
or instruction or promise. 

The group of three coming first in these letters makes 
Laodicea seem to be the seventh and last, though the letters 
are not numbered. But the letter to Laodicea is not the 



26 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

proper seventh nor last, but is the fourth and the end of its 
group. The fourth in all the groups is as Laodicea. In the 
seals it is a dead horse from hades, and in the trumpets it is 
a dead canopy, the sun, moon and stars all gone out, and 
in the two programs that follow beginning Ch. 14, the fourth 
in one group is a sea of blood from the winepress, and in 
the other it is the end and last of all judgments, the plague 
of hail. On the other hand, when the third of its group is 
also the seventh, as in the seals and trumpets, it is the 
victory of Heaven against the world of evil so that the 
grouping has the implication of fortelling the end. On one 
side victory and glory, on the other defeat and shame. 

VALUE OF THIS DIVISION. 

Nearly all the recent books on the Revelation follow the 
conjecture of a writer who taught that the conditions of the 
seven churches in Asia Minor were prophetic of "the seven 
ages" arrangement, and that the church at Laodicea, being 
the last and seventh, it would follow that the Kingdom of 
Heaven would be directly preceded by a Laodicean condition 
of the church and the world. 

But as the Laodicean is neither the proper seventh nor 
the last, being only the last of its own group of four, and 
these groups being in reversed order, it follows that if the 
groups which govern were in their chronological relations, 
Ephesus would be the seventh and the last of its group of 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 27 

the three. That church had seven words of approval, as 
against the church at Laodicea, which has six words of re- 
proof and shame, and this better comports with the words 
of wisdom quoted from Christ's mouth in the gospel in 
which he speaks of his program as "First the blade, then 
the ear and then the full corn in the ear." This comports 
with our experience and common sense and the conjecture 
that has spoiled so many books, has reversed that order of 
the Spirit which a true and discerning exposition must now 
set forth. 

Besides these facts in the structure that so guards a 
true rendering, the churches were addressed concerning the 
things "thou seest," the "things which shall shortly" or 
"quickly come to pass," and as Christ told the order that 
leads to the Kingdom of Heaven in the most open manner, 
his right foot upon the sea and his left upon the earth, and 
his right hand raised to Heaven, with the solemn oath. No 
cryptic signs can be allowed against that act nor can we 
have any respect for the authority of a book that has two 
or three ways of reckoning the times of the "Hereafter." 
Ch. 1:19,4:1,9:12. 

These three "hereafters" express all the chronology to 
be found in the book. 

The notion that these churches were designed to prog- 
nosticate any so-called "seven periods" of oncoming condi- 
tions till the end is the merest fancy ; so is everything that is 



28 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

meant to rest on the seven as a mathematical measure in- 
stead of the sign and symbol which it primarily is in every 
case calling, not for arithmetic, but rather for the higher 
range of algebra in symbols well guarded. 

The president of one of the greatest universities has 
asked, "Why be so painstaking in the constructive elements 
of this book?" It is to disprove and overthrow the com- 
mon and illiterate notion that it is a negligible sort of 
ecstasy, and to vindicate the dignity of its claims and good- 
ness of the wisdom of its selectness and its appeals to "Him 
that hath wisdom and understanding." 

The wide distinction of the two books and the meaning 
of the grouping of the programs into the two orders of four 
and three wait a full confirmation in the four programs to 
follow. There is no spot on earth where one can view 
all the Heavenly constellations at one time. 

Was there no reproof or instruction for these angels, the 
apostles, to the churches, such as John received? But they 
were out of commission, having finished their work trans- 
lated and glorified and held as stars in the right hand of the 
Master as he walks in the midst of the golden candlesticks, 
and John the old man, "the elder," was now entrusted with 
the final select ministry as the recording angel and the angel 
to the churches. Rev. 22:16. 

The only actual teachers and directors noticed in the 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 29 

letters are the Balaamite, Nicolaitan and Jezebel class, 
showing how rapidly the cause was sinking into the slew of 
the heathen sin. 

As already stated John, still surviving, and the disappoint- 
ment over that coming of the Lord in the clouds of Heaven, 
so earnestly looked for in the times of Paul, attention was 
turned toward John. And now more than ever, that he had 
been banished, and it was no wonder that the rumor spread 
abroad among the anxious brethren of that saying which 
Christ himself made in regard to his coming, "What is that 
to thee if he tarries till I come," and gives point to the one 
and only one quotation which John makes, "Behold he Com- 
eth in the clouds of Heaven," and so indeed did he appear to 
John to bestow that scroll which every eye in Heaven and on 
the earth witnessed when the Lamb, "the lion of the tribe of 
Judah," took it from the hand of the Father Almighty. It 
was great news and spread fast that Christ had indeed ap- 
peared again in every respect as authoritatively as He had 
appeared to Paul to constitute him an apostle and the strain 
which followed through the fathers was so strongly of this 
character that John rather than Peter, might have been said 
to have had a succession, spiritual, free and creative. So do 
the words imply, "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify 
these things to you in the churches," both to testify and to 
write in a book. 

Christ had broken with the world horizontally but his 



30 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

churches had broken off vertically and had carried every 
strata from sun-kissed, fertile soil, down to brimstone and 
reptilian bottom; from John, the saint and martyr, to 
Balaam to Jezebel and satan. 

Christ separated the wheat from the chaff, the sheep 
from the goats, the gold from the dross, but this strain had 
left the churches, nor yet has seemed to return, and we face 
the question, since the church follows the government and 
the school and the mart, whether it is possible to have a 
truly christian church in a heathen or neutral state or other 
than in a christian environment a commonwealth, the King- 
dom of God ? It is not unbelief in Christ that now asks, "Is 
the Christian church still Christian?" 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 31 

THE SCROLL. 

The writing on the outside of the scroll, which John 
and all the realms of God beheld, passed all the way around 
the scroll and that would bring the two ends together, as 
already stated, and that accounts for the fact that the first 
three chapters belong with the last two chapters in the 
book, which make it intelligible to the readers now as they 
were intended to be then. It is from these first three and 
the last two chapters that one ever hears a sermon from the 
Revelation of Jesus Christ, and then under duress by dint 
of its being joined with the great mysterious interior which 
has so bewildered us hitherto. It is the plain language on 
this outside of the scroll that tempts the preacher to find 
the blessing, which is the only book to promise to "him that 
reads or hears its words of prophecy," to him that over- 
comes. It is here we find the greatest wealth of promises. 
Here the tree of life, here the water of life and its manna, 
the river of life and the gold tried in the fire, and the "new 
name written on a white stone," and the "city of God," and 
its precious foundation stones. The promises are to the in- 
dividuals and to those faithful where there was no church, 
as at Sardis, where the church was dead. 



32 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST. 

CHAPTER I. 

1. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show 
unto his servants, even the things which must shortly come to pass: and 
he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John; 

2. Who bare witness of the word of God, and of the testimony of 
Jesus Christ, even of all things that he saw. 

3. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the 
prophecy, and keep the things that are written therein: for the time is 
at hand. 

4. John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and 
peace, from him who is and who was and who is to come; and from the 
seven Spirits that are before his throne. 

5. And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn 
of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Unto him that 
loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood. 

6. And he made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God and 
Father; to him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen. 

7. Behold, he cometh with the clouds; and every eye shall see him, 
and they that pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth shall mourn 
over him. Even so, Amen. 

8. I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, who is and 
who was and who is to come, the Almighty. 

Johns Experience 

9. I, John, your brother and partaker with you in the tribulation and 
kingdom and patience which are in Jesus, was in the isle that is called 
Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 

10. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a 
great voice, as of a trumpet. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 33 

11. Saying, What thou seest, write in a book and send it to the 
seven churches: unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamum, 
and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto 
Laodicea. 

12. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And having 
turned I saw seven golden candlesticks; 

Christ's Official Insignia 

13. And in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto a son of man, 
clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about at the breasts 
with a golden girdle. 

14. And his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as 
snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; 

15. And his feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined 
in a furnace; and his voice as the voice of many waters. 

16. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth 
proceeded a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun 
shineth in his strength. 

17. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid 
his right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last, 

18. And the Living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive 
for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades. 

19. Write therefore the things which thou sawest, and the things 
which are, and the things which shall come to pass hereafter; 

20. The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right 
hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels 
of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks are seven churches. 



34 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

CHAPTER II. 

Open Letters to the Churches, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos. 
First Group, the Spirit Pronounces the Promise 

1. To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: 

These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, 
he that walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks: 

2. I know thy works, and thy toil and patience, and that thou canst 
not bear evil men, and didst try them that call themselves apostles, and 
they are not, and didst find them false; 

3. And thou hast patience and didst bear for my name's sake, and 
hast not grown weary. 

4. But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love. 

5. Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent and do 
the first works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out 
of its place, except thou repent. 

6. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the works of the Nicolaitans, 
which I also hate. 

7. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the 
churches. To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree 
of life, which is in the Paradise of God. 

8. And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: 

These things saith the first and the last, who was dead, and lived 
again : 

9. I know thy tribulation, and thy poverty (but thou art rich), and 
the blasphemy of them that say they are Jews, and they are not, but 
are a synagogue of Satan. 

10. Fear not the things which thou art about to suffer: behold, the 
devil is about to cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and 
ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I 
will give thee the crown of life. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 35 

11. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the 
churches. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. 

12. And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: 
These things saith he that hath the sharp two-edged sword: 

13. I know where thou dwellest, even where Satan's throne is; and 
thou holdest fast my name, and didst not deny my faith, even in the 
days of Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, 
where Satan dwelleth. 

14. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there 
some that hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stum- 
blingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, 
and to commit fornication. 

15. So hast thou also some that hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans 
in like manner. 

16. Repent therefore; or else I come to thee quickly, and I will make 
war against them with the sword of my mouth. 

17. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the 
churches. To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden 
manna, and I will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new 
name written, which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it. 

Letters to Second Group, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and 
Laodicea — The Promises Were From Christ 

18. And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: 

These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like a flame of 
fire, and his feet are like unto burnished brass: 

19. I know thy works, and thy love and faith and ministry and 
patience, and that thy last works are more than the first. 

20. But I have this against thee, that thou sufferest the woman 
Jezebel, who calleth herself a prophetess; and she teacheth and seduceth 
my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols. 



36 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

21. And I gave her time that she should repent; and she willeth not 
to repent of her fornication. 

22. Behold, I cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery 
with her into great tribulation, except they repent of her works. 

23. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall 
know that I am he that searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give 
unto each one of you according to your works. 

24. But to you I say, to the rest that are in Thyatira, as many as 
have not this teaching, who know not the deep things of Satan, as they 
are wont to say; I cast upon you none other burden. 

25. Nevertheless that which ye have, hold fast till I come. 

26. And he that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto 
the end, to him will I give authority over the nations: 

27. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the 
potter are broken to shivers; as I also have received of my Father: 

28. And I will give him the morning star. 

29. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the 
churches. 



CHAPTER III. 

1. And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: 

These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the 
seven stars: I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, 
and thou art dead. 

2. Be thou watchful, and establish the things that remain, which 
were ready to die: for I have found no works of thine perfected before 
my God. 

3. Remember therefore how thou hast received and didst hear; and 
keep it, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come as a 
thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 37 

4. But thou hast a few names in Sardis that did not defile their 
garments: and they shall walk with me in white; for they are worthy. 

5. He that overcometh shall thus be arrayed in white garments; 
and I will in no wise blot his name out of the book of life, and I will 
confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. 

6. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the 
churches. 

7. And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: 

These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the 
key of David, he that openeth and none shall shut, and that shutteth 
and none openeth: 

8. I know thy works (behold, I have set before thee a door opened, 
which none can shut), and thou hast a little power, and didst keep my 
word, and didst not deny my name. 

9. Behold, I give of the synagogue of Satan, of them that say they 
are Jews, and they are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come 
and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. 

10. Because thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will 
keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the 
whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. 

11. I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no one 
take thy crown. 

12. He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the temple of 
my God, and he shall go out thence no more: and I will write upon him 
the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new 
Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God, and mine 
own new name. 

13. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the 
churches. 



38 THE KING'S TRUMPET 



14. And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: 

These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the begin- 
ning of the creation of God: 

15. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would 
thou wert cold or hot. 

16. So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will 
spew thee out of my mouth. 

17. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and 
have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one 
and miserable and poor and blind and naked: 

18. I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou may- 
est become rich; and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, 
and that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eyesalve 
to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see. 

19. As many as I love, I reprove and chasten: be zealous therefore, 
and repent. 

20. Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my 
voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, 
and he with me. 

21. He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in 
my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his 
throne. 

22. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the 
churches. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 39 

THE GREAT SEALED MESSAGE. 

The high and artistic order we found in the message to 
the churches creates in every reader the expectation that the 
rest of the book will prove as orderly an array of teaching. 
It does indeed, only the order is not that of our books nor 
of the schools, but of the Spirit uniting spiritual things with 
things spiritual. 

As we have the book, and turning over the leaves as our 
books require us to do, we come upon Chapter Four, after 
leaving the letters, and we come to a dead halt. There is no 
action. The scene presented is static and we go to guessing 
at the meaning of the symbols which we would not have to 
do if we would read that chapter in its proper place. It is 
a scene of the last state of the prophecy, and trying to read 
it destroys that hope and confidence wherewith we began to 
read those glowing words to the churches* 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Last State, a Scene of the End of the Things Hereafter 

1. After these things I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven, and 
the first voice that I heard, a voice as of a trumpet speaking with me, one 
saying, Come up hither, and I will show thee the things which must 
come to pass hereafter. 

2. Straightway I was in the Spirit: and behold, there was a throne 
set in heaven, and one sitting upon the throne; 



40 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

3. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper stone and a sar- 
dius; and there was a rainbow round about the throne, like an emerald 
to look upon. 

4. And round about the throne were four and twenty thrones: and 
upon the thrones / saw four and twenty elders sitting, arrayed in white 
garments; and on their heads crowns of gold. 

5. And out of the throne proceed lightnings and voices and thunders. 
And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are 
the seven Spirits of God; 

6. And before the throne, as it were a sea of glass like unto crystal; 
and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, four living 
creatures full of eyes before and behind. 

7. And the first creature was like a lion, and the second creature 
like a calf, and the third creature had a face as of a man, and the fourth 
creature was like a flying eagle. 

8. And the four living creatures, having each one of them six wings, 
are full of eyes round about and within: and they have no rest day and 
night, saying, 

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was 
and who is and who is to come. 

9. And when the living creatures shall give glory and honor and 
thanks to him that sitteth on the throne, to him that liveth for ever and 
ever, 

10. The four and twenty elders shall fall down before him that 
sitteth on the throne, and shall worship him that liveth for ever and 
ever, and shall cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 

11. Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the 
glory and the honor and the power: for thou didst create all 
things, and because of thy will they were, and were created. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 41 

The result is a bewilderment which tends to reconcile us to 
the notion that the book was a mere ecstasy of an exile and 
may be compared to the heathen Sibylline oracles, as some 
scholars are now teaching, and that it has little or none of 
the authority we accredit to the vision of Paul, out of which 
was sprung that ministry which has so overshadowed our 
Protestant world. "Come up hither and I will show you 
the hereafter." 

It is necessary to show the plan or form of the interior 
of the scroll to enable the reader to follow with an under- 
standing mind. Here is a larger mold for our thought. 

There are four leading programs in the interior, all in 
the sign of Seven, although they have eleven or more actual 
parts and they are to be read more as drama than litera- 
ture, or like a moving picture show with words interspersed 
here and there that help to explain. We shall give no at- 
tention to the numerals as arithmetic, but more as the higher 
range, and not as seeing through a microscope as dissecting 
the words, but as through a telescope, not calling upon Dan- 
iel or Paul or other prophets but confining an open and 
honest heart and the flower of the mind to the Holy Spirit's 
own order, past, present and hereafter. 

The interior, or sealed writing, has four major programs, 
each with its proper preface or stage setting, as a drama, 
and conclusion which marks the end of the time. The seal 
breaking belongs to Christ alone, and the trumpeting be- 



42 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

longs to the apostles alone, except the last, which is Christ's 
own. Later, in Chs. 14, 15, 16, we have Christ and his 
apostles again acting as to the regeneration to be explained 
in their place. 

The seals and trumpets are divided into groups of four 
and three, the four pertaining to their ministry together 
with Christ on earth, and the group three refers to the new 
ministry under and with the Spirit, which began on the day 
of Pentecost. The grouping of the letters and the two pro- 
grams just mentioned, Chs. 14, 15, 16, is only formal or con- 
ventional to preserve the structure, like the constant repeti- 
tion of "tribes, tongues, peoples and nations," is to keep the 
sign of four in place and to avoid confusion and give assur- 
ance. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 



43 



A diagram may assist to show the difference in the 
groups so necessary to understand. 



The Seals 
12 3 4 

s s s s 

The Trumpets 
12 3 4 
T T T T 

Evangels 
12 3 
E E E 

Avengers 
1 2 3 
AAA 

The Letters 
12 3 
L L L 



£ 


5 


fi 




W 


7 


n 








H 




53 

W 
O 


S 


S 




H 


S 








rn 












< 


5 


6 




111 

a* 


7 




T 


T 




C/J 


T 




4 




5 


6 


7 




E 




E 


E 


E 



4 5 6 
AAA 



4 5 6 7 
L L L L 



"Let him that hath wisdom, him that hath understand- 
ing and him that hath an ear hear." 



44 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

TAKING THE SEALED BOOK. CH. V TO VIII :2. 

It is easier to understand the Revelation to begin read- 
ing at the Ch. 5. The scene here is perfectly open to all 
observers and it represents that all in Heaven and earth 
and the underworld heard the call for someone who should 
be able to take the scroll from the right hand of the Al- 
mighty and to break its seals. Every one saw Him and 
heard the call. 

No one having answered to the call, John says, "I wept 
much." But one of the elders spoke to him and said, "Do 
not weep. Behold the lion that is of the tribe of Judah, 
the seed of David ! He hath overcome to open the book and 
the seven seals of it." 

If the reader has begun to read from the first chapter 
and had his hopes thwarted in reading the Ch. 4, he here 
begins to recover and expects the disclosure of secrets as 
the scroll, being sealed, would seem to promise. 

What he sees is the ushering in upon the earth of a 
white horse and he is in no way informed by it. He has 
passed by the greatest lesson in the book already, which 
was enacted openly. It is the one supreme lesson. It is the 
lesson of the relation of Christ to the Almighty, that he 
alone of all in Heaven or on the earth or in the underworld 
could take the book, and that His power and ability and 
worthiness was because He had "washed us in His blood 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 45 

and had made us kings and priests unto God and His 
Father." 

THE WHITE HORSE. 

The white horse is a part of the group lesson. Alone 
and of itself, it stands for nothing, but in opposition to the 
other three horses that oppose Him, the group presents a 
broad frontage of Christ's venture on earth and his encoun- 
ter with the powers that arise from the pit of the abyss. 

The horse is white, an appropriated symbol, and one that 
is explained, Ch. 19 :8, "The white linen is the righteous- 
ness of saints." To the souls under the altar who cry to 
him, "white linen," is awarded, and the army that follows 
him from the battle of Armageddon rides upon white horses 
following his own, as they go to the marriage of the Lamb, 
and "the great supper of God," where the bride appears 
"arrayed in fine linen, bright and pure." His own head and 
his hair are white as snow, white as wool, "and here, wear- 
ing the crown of gold and going forth on the earth," con- 
quering and to conquer with a bow that selects one here 
and there. Prince of Peace and to dispel all doubt of the 
intent of this bright equestrian, He is followed by the red 
horseman, wielding a great red sword to take peace from 
the earth, which the Prince came to offer. The white rider 
came "conquering and to conquer," instructive, purposeful, 
predictive, infinitive. 



46 THE KING'S TRUMPET 



Could any one but Christ lead on a white horse ? It was 
from the great white throne he proceeded and his enemies 
came up out of the pit of the abyss called hades, led by 
Death, and followed by the dragonades, who come up to 
destroy, and the gathered saints are a white sea before the 
great throne. 

The white horse let go on the earth came from God. 
He had just been presented to us as the one elect of God 
and who, but he, could lead in the conquering conflict of 
the world? Who else at that time was claiming worship 
from his servants, or to whom the souls of martyrs would 
cry? 

The four, who are called beasts, and also "the living 
ones" that usher in these four horses upon the earth, are a 
unit and show no difference, for their office is one and they 
partake of both natures, human and beast. Their forms are 
the forms of beasts but they are seen at the last about the 
throne of God with the elders and the sea of white saints, 
giving honor to God. 

We shall be getting better acquainted with them as we 
proceed. Wait. 

The other three horses and riders are a subordinate unit. 
They follow Christ, the first one to "take away the peace" 
which the Prince of Peace brought to the world. He rides 
the blood-red sign, the color given the great red dragon, 
the devil, and from hades came to make war. War that calls 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 47 

for the black horse rider, a night merchant with scales to 
weigh in scant allowance what the people may eat after the 
war destroyers have destroyed and starved them, and then 
follows the pale horse and his rider "Death." Let there be 
no revolt against Christ being at the head of all princedoms 
and powers. For making this claim he was killed. 

THE SECOND LESSON. 

The second lesson of the vision is Christ's relation to 
the world powers, following the first lesson of his relations 
to the Father as Creator. 

These four horses do not represent four successive gov- 
ernments nor point to any succession of time, but only op- 
pose the claims which Christ exhibits to point out his oppo- 
sition to the reigning emperors and to show the nature and 
origin of the world order of brutal selfishness in general, 
at that moment an acute agony by the edict of Domitian, 
Roman emperor. 

Can it be possible that so great havoc has been made in 
this second lesson by our slogan of, "Separation of church 
and state?" Has it resulted in divorcing Christ from civil 
and commercial righteousness? When Christ stood in the 
presence of the Roman court and was asked whether he 
were a king He said, "I am, and to that end I was born." 
Do we resent the notion that Christ is a world power ? May 
it not be that in this we may find the real cause of the re- 



48 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

cent collapse in the land that gave birth to our Pauline 
form of Christianity? Was Nebuchadnezzar the head 
of gold under the older times? When we pray for the 
Kingdom of God to come do we expect it to be a Christian 
state or that two totally different civilizations can live in the 
same house? 

The four horses present a single lesson and that lesson is 
that Christ assumes the leadership of the nations, "The gov- 
ernment shall rest upon his shoulders." All human govern- 
ment is of one quality and the red horse and black horse 
and pale horse belong to all the works of men, and as the 
white horse proceeds from God so do the enemies of Christ 
proceed from the abyss, and the last horseman has the world 
sign of four, four ways of killing as the black horseman 
has four articles for sale. In other words, "Tribes, tongues, 
peoples and nations," the whole Roman world and Roman- 
ish idolatry. 

The befogging interpretations which have been put forth 
on these four horses have produced a cynical and contempt- 
uous attitude of mind toward the great vision. The visions 
of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel were one, that of Peter and 
Cornelius one, that of Paul and Ananias one, and the lesson 
of the horses is one, but it is not finished. It will be taken 
up under new conditions. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 49 

SECOND GROUP. 

We read, "And when he opened the fifth seal I saw 
under the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the 
word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus which they 
held." 

With this beginning of the second group we find the 
spiritual world opening against the earth world of bru- 
tality and hades of the fourth seal, whence it came. 

Here is bold opposition. Here is the antithesis of the 
two groups. 

The lesson is Christ's relations to his followers. He 
has conquered and they call to Him. 

It is not much like the order of books we make but of 
the Spirit. That was announced by Christ himself on the 
greatest occasion of his ministry on earth. 

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood 
and cried, saying: "If any man thirst let him come unto 
me and drink. He that believeth on me as the scripture 
has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 
But this spoke He of the Spirit which they that believed 
on Him should receive, for the Spirit was not yet given be- 
cause Jesus was not yet glorified." John 7 :37. 

Here is delay and ominous suspense. It is not necessary 
to tell any New Testament reader the painstaking in John's 
gospel to show the importance of the ascension and glorifica- 



50 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

tion of Christ. "I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you 
that I go away for if I go not away the comforter will not 
come unto you, but if I depart I will send him unto you, 
and when He has come he will reprove the world in respect 
to righteousness and judgment. Of sin because they be- 
lieve not on me and of righteousness because I go to my 
Father and you see me no more." 

Here is the order raised above all other kinds of order 
contrived by man. The fifth seal expresses an appeal to 
Christ from the martyrs who bore testimony to the truth of 
the resurrection. Their boldness before the rulers was a 
power that could not be resisted. But as Christ had the 
power to rise from the dead He was above all rulers. He 
had sent the Spirit to rebuke the world. His followers had 
followed in the way he led. They now seek Him to vindi- 
cate their preaching as by his resurrection he had proven 
himself able to do. 

They are told to wait a while and white garments were 
given to them. 

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth," 
so came the voice from Heaven saying: "Amen saith the 
Spirit, that they may rest from their labors and their works 
do follow them." 

This carries us to the hither side of the resurrection and 
to the times of persecution and martyrdom following the 
ascension. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 51 

The "henceforth" points to the new era begun by the 
victory over the grave. The souls are to wait. 

In our time, we are now after Pentecost. Christ may 
now be invoked, "Hitherto you have asked nothing in My 
name." 

Three seals reply to the four out of Heaven and from 
the judgment seat. 

THE SIXTH SEAL. 

We are prone to think of these seals in terms of our own 
times. 

It is certain that the sixth seal fulfills the promise of 
the fifth, for the retribution upon the rich men and captains 
and merchants of the world order shows they are van- 
quished. It is clear, therefore, that here is the justification 
of the righteousness of the claims of Christ and the vindi- 
cation of "the faith and patience of the saints." It follows 
that they who live now are in the times of the sixth seal and 
are living followers of Christ, and those who have died in 
the Lord are included with those who from the first chose 
to "obey God rather than men." 

The scene of the sixth seal is patterned upon the cruci- 
fixion of Christ when the disciples ran away and left him 
alone, except that one disciple whom Jesus loved, and upon 
whose breast he had reclined at the last supper, and who was 



52 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

reserved to express in writing the last message from an 
apostle. 

This sixth seal, being in the terms and forms of a coun- 
ter crucifixion, shows the tables are turned. The guilty who 
have spurned the claims of Christ now find no place to hide 
and, heaven be praised, that the new cry for a Christian 
democracy that has gone out to all the world from our own 
best loved country seems now to have opened wider the door 
to the coming reign of that righteousness which our nation 
seems in some instances to have manifested toward "the 
world that lieth in darkness." 

The lesson of the sixth seal is so apparent that no in- 
terpreter seems to have missed it. It is, therefore, predictive 
in part as it is not yet fulfilled. This is "the faith and 
patience of the saints" here and now as it was then of all 
who serve the Lord in holiness of heart. 

The cry of these doomed rejectors of Christ is a call 
upon the mountains and rocks to fall upon them and to the 
caves in the earth to hide them from the face of God and 
"from the wrath of the Lamb." But all the hiding places 
have fled from the hiders and the rocks and hills have no 
place. 

If a Christian democracy shall again require the blood 
of martyrs as at the first, are we ready for the trial ? 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 53 

THE SEVENTH SEAL. 

Six days of labor then the Sabbath. Silence in Heaven. 
The work is done. 

Six days in world creation and six days labor in the spir- 
itual creation. 

This new labor fell upon the only one in Heaven or on 
earth or the underworld, the only one who was able to take 
the scroll from the right hand of Him who sits upon the 
Great White Throne. 

The six days labor make us kings and priests unto God, 
white and shining before his throne. 

This is the day when the merchants are ashamed to die 
rich and the monarchs and autocrats are hunting for shelter 
and hiding places and we want to see to it there are no 
longer such places for the mountains shall be brought down, 
and the valleys leveled when the gospel is fully unleashed. 

In these seals, openings, no mention is made of the 
apostles and the Spirit is alluded to as having ascended with 
Christ and in that part that lies between the sixth and sev- 
enth seals we must now take in hand. 

All expansions waited upon the supreme acts of Christ, 
His resurrection, His ascension and the baptism of the Spirit 
to fill the hearts with divine fervor, those who were to speak 
and to show the sign in the tongues of fire that sat upon 
their heads to signify that oral ministry that began upon 



54 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

the day of Pentecost and was followed by the churches, 
which were to open a highway for "the Kingdom of God 
and Prince of the Kings of the Earth." 

THE SUPPLEMENT TO THE SEALS PROGRAM. 

There lies between the sixth and the seventh of the 
seals a part which has given the greatest trouble to the 
interpreters of the book. They have called it by such names 
as "episode, "hiatus," "interregnum," "parenthesis," and 
others. It is in fact a subordinate program within the pro- 
gram. It is a supplement and review. It goes back in point 
of time and takes up the story of Christ's historical rela- 
tions to the world powers where it left off the red horse with 
red rider bearing the great sword to take "peace from the 
eat m." A new situation came when Christ had been "glori- 
fied," and returned in the power of the eternal Spirit and 
brought down the rulers to beg to be let alone. 

THE METHOD. 

It seems this is the place to speak of the method where. 
if anywhere, the reader might complain of complexity, for 
here again is one of the places where so many readers have 
given up hope. It has been a wonder that since Paul was 
at such pains to give us a list of the gifts of the Spirit for 
all other purposes, that he did not name that gift of the 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 55 

Spirit which was to write Holy Scripture, seeing as we do 
now that since we have taken all these New Testament 
writings as directly inspired and intended to be gathered and 
put together and to become our chart and compass in all 
things in these wild ages of storm and stress, that to us the 
most important of all the Spirit's gifts there should be one 
that fitted the possessor of it to write perfect scripture and 
to save Paul himself the necessity of saying that he was 
writing some things upon his personal initiative as advice. 
But no such gift was mentioned. 

The Revelation is indeed new to us. It is strange and 
at first is as bewildering as the old family clock is to the 
little child that is compelled to heed its voice. There it 
stands in the corner of the livingroom. Its pendulum 
swings in an old track all its own across its prison box, 
saying "tick tock," day and night. Inside there are wheels 
of different sizes and turning in different directions, op- 
posing each other, and upon the face are three hands of 
different sizes, one of them passing all the way around the 
dead face of the disk once every hour, and another follows 
that passes one twelfth of the circuit in the same time, and 
another, a second little vigil, that passes around its own 
disk seven hundred and twenty times every day, and no 
complaint is made of complexity. The three hands, though 
differently timed, come to an agreement at twelve and they 
all point up to the noon sign and at that moment there comes 



56 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

a voice from within which calls out in twelve strokes, and 
the whistles blow, and the bells ring, and the school lets 
out, and court adjourns, and so the little ingenious device, 
seemingly so complex, does for man a very useful service. 
All its construction is designed to keep in harmony with the 
order that we find in the heavens of matter. How then shall 
we complain if the Spirit of God should speak as He will? 
Who shall say this is a hard way and we cannot follow? 
A great scholar said, "I cannot understand the Revelations." 
"It may be you are not called upon Doctor," was the reply, 
"for it calls upon him that hath wisdom," to "him that hath 
understanding," and to "him that hath an ear to hear," and 
if one is sure one does not belong to either of these classes 
he may be excused. 

The first thing to consider in this supplement is the same 
opposition of parts we found between the white horse that 
came from Heaven to lead on earth and the hostile signs 
against Him: Herod and Pontius Pilate and the children 
of Israel, Romanized and forsaking the way of their fathers, 
"gathered together against the Lord and against his 
anointed." 

John says, "After this I saw four angels standing on the 
four corners of the earth." "After this" means only that he 
saw this later, not that it occurred later, as we shall see in 
repeated instances where no attempt is made to follow 
chronological order. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 57 

Now, over against these "four angels," as they are 
called, standing on the earth, there appears another scene. 
"And I saw another angel ascending" — ascending from the 
earth. This one ascends in the East or sun-rising. That is 
the Morning star, as He calls himself, "I am the bright 
morning star." Ch. 22:16. The four agents who stand on 
the four quarters of the earth are claimants, squatters, reds, 
holding down the earth and are preventing the winds from 
blowing. 

That is the old chief business of tyrants and autocrats 
to prevent free discussion, to repress all free spirits, to keep 
down agitation, standpatters, while the opposing angel who 
ascends from earth to Heaven bears "the Seal of the living 
God," as we learn a moment later, to "seal the servants of 
God," and these servants are of the twelve tribes of Israel, 
so expressly stated, and after them the total sainthood of 
all saintly souls redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. How 
perfectly impossible it is to suppose there could be any 
other spirit than that Holy one called "the Seven Spirits of 
God" here declared to be "the seal of the living God !" 

Who but Christ himself ever did or ever could ascend, 
bearing the Spirit? Whoever else was raised up by that 
Spirit? Who but He promised to confer that spirit that is 
to seal believers to Himself and the Father by His power? 
Then undoubtedly it was the ascension of Christ that John 



58 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

saw calling Him "another angel" time and again as we 
shall see. 

Who then were these four that remained on the earth 
to hold it down to repress the purifying winds from blow- 
ing? 

They are the representatives of the lost and sinful world, 
the four that we find bound in the great river Euphratese, 
the four "beasts" as we have it in the common translation 
and ought to be translated by another word for we are 
accustomed to think of "angels" as all belonging to Heaven, 
though all the angels in the Revelation are human beings, 
either present or absent from this world. There is no sepa- 
rate order of celestials come to view in the drama. 

It remains to notice that in the act of the ascending 
messenger, He commands the four that they "hurt not the 
earth nor its flora nor its seas." These belong to God. Here 
comes in the use of the new sign of the three. The last 
three of all the programs refer to the reign of the Spirit, 
which began on the day of the Pentecost, and here the things 
of God are set in the sign of three. It is here that the 
ascending Messenger is able to command the four by a re- 
straining order and they obey Him for He proceeds at once 
to "seal the servants of God," first those of Israel and then 
out of every nation till the innumerable multitudes of the 
bloodwashed stand before the throne looking like a sea of 
glass, glistening in their halo of glory and in white array. 



THE KINGS TRUMPET 59 

What more graphic picture could be drawn than this of 
the ascension of Christ and the world powers claiming the 
earth, begging at the feet of the apostles to be let alone 
from the torment of the testimony of the resurrection and 
ascension borne in upon His enemy with signs and wonders 
under the seal and power of the Spirit of Almighty God? 

If there were any room for a remaining doubt of the 
true identification of the purpose of the scene now before 
us, we only need to wait till we have come to the trumpets 
to find the same lesson in the ascension and in its' normal 
place. First in the letters to the churches we noticed an 
exchange of Christ and the Spirit in reference to the warn- 
ings and the promises and beyond the seals and trumpets we 
shall see the pivotal place which the ascension and glorifica- 
tion of Christ hold in all the five programs. 

The Pentecost that follows the ascension, in this seals 
program, comes out into the open literalism and names the 
tribes of Israel and that out of them first is called and sealed 
and the gentiles follow till the full scene of all the saved is 
presented to John, and he is asked, "Who are all these in 
righteous array about the throne?" and not being able to 
answer he is told who they are. 

There are no other four angels found in the Revelation 
than these symbols or effigies of "the peoples, tribes, tongues 
and nations," as they were in apostacy from God, from the 
time they went out of Eden and settled along the river that 



60 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

divided into four heads after the river of God, as it divided 
outside the garden of the Lord, until the day in which they 
rejected the love of God in the person of His Son, and 
which continue until this day to reject his offer of mercy. 
Here we have found the beginning place of His sign in the 
four. 

In the sixth seal we had passed to the end of the six 
days' labor of the program of Christ's appearance among 
men as their rightful ruler in His six great labors of new 
spiritual creation and here follows His Sabbath. 

THE SEVENTH SEAL. 

The seventh seal is static. All is still. It is the Sabbath. 
His rest who had labored and had given birth to a new 
world wherein righteousness shall rule, once His people 
awake to see as they are seen. Once they shall hear and 
sound out the seventh trumpet, Christ's own and God's. 

Nothing is done. Nothing follows. It is the end of the 
program, end of the time. 

Christ's relations to the Father is the first lesson and be- 
ginning. He alone of all in the universe of God could take 
the Revelation from the right hand of the Father. He 
alone could be sent upon the white horse among the world 
powers as head of all things on earth as in Heaven — show- 
ing His claim to be the appointed ruler of God over the 
nations of the earth. The third lesson is His relations to 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 61 

the souls of the martyrs who cry to him for vindication 
and are answered. The fourth lesson is His answer when 
the sixth seal is broken and the princes and kings and mighty 
men flee from the presence of God and the wrath of the 
Lamb and seek to hide in the caves of the mountains and 
the islands of the sea, after God has removed all the hiding 
places from the hiders. The review lessons take up the 
new stand which Christ makes from the throne of His 
Father by the Spirit that bore him away in which He is able 
to command the rulers who slew him and to rescue from 
them and defend the souls who confessed His authority. 

The Last Lesson of the Seals is the day of Pentecost and 
the conversion of Jews out of all the twelve tribes of Israel, 
and then after them that John is permitted to see the entire 
company of saints redeemed from all the nations of the 
earth and to be told in plain words who they were and that 
the Lamb shall lead them to the fountains of living waters 
and that "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 
Our feet seem on historic grounds. Wait. 

What does it mean that we should have such a program 
showing the Father upon His throne, and the Christ and 
the Spirit and the sealed multitude, all the churches, and 
not a reference to the apostles except John, who only hears 
the numbering of Israel and sees the redeemed but does not 
understand and must be told. What shall we look for next ? 



62 THE KING'S TRUMPET 



CHAPTER V. 

The Opening Scene, Second Program, the Sealed Scroll 

Taken 

1. And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a 
book written within and on the back, close sealed with seven seals. 

2. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a great voice, Who is 
worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? 

3. And no one in the heaven, or on the earth, or under the earth, 
was able to open the book, or to look thereon. 

4. And I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open the 
book, or to look thereon: 

5. And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not; behold, the Lion 
that is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath overcome to open 
the book and the seven seals thereof. 

6. And I saw in the midst of the throne and of the four living crea- 
tures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as though it had 
been slain, having seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the seven 
Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth. 

7. And he came, and he taketh it out of the right hand of him that 
sat on the throne. 

8. And when he had taken the book, the four living creatures and 
the four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one 
a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the 
saints. 

The Great Ovation 

9. And they sing a new song, saying: 

Worthy art thou to take the book, and to open the seals 
thereof: for thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God 
with thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, 
and nation. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 63 

10. And madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and 
priests; and they reign upon the earth. 

11. And I saw, and I heard a voice of many angels round about the 
throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them 
was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; 

12. Saying with a great voice, 

Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the 
power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honor, and 
glory, and blessing. 

13. And every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the 
earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in 
them, heard I saying, 

Unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, 
be the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and the 
dominion, for ever and ever. 

14. And the four living creatures said, Amen. And the elders fell 
down and worshipped. 



CHAPTER VI. 



The Group of Four Seals, Christ Head of World Powers 

in White 

1. And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I 
heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, 
Come. 

2. And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon had 
a bow; and there was given unto him a crown: and he came forth con- 
quering, and to conquer. 

3. And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living 
creature saying, Come. 



64 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

4. And another horse came forth, a red horse: and to him that sat 
thereon it was given to take peace from the earth, and that they should 
slay one another: and there was given unto him a great sword. 

5. And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third living crea- 
ture saying, Come. And I saw, and behold, a black horse; and he that 
sat thereon had a balance in his hand. 

6. And I heard as it were a voice in the midst of the four living 
creatures saying, A measure of wheat for a shilling, and three measures 
of barley for a shilling and the oil and the wine hurt thou not. 

Second Group. Three Seals Opened 

7. And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the 
fourth living creature saying, Come. 

8. And I saw, and behold, a pale horse: and he that sat upon him, 
his name was Death; and Hades followed with him. And there was given 
unto them authority over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, 
and with famine, and with death, and by the wild beasts of the earth. 

9. And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the 
souls of them that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testi- 
mony which they held: 

10. And they cried with a great voice, saying, How long, Master, 
the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them 
that dwell on the earth? 

11. And there was given then to each one a white robe; and it was 
said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little time, until their 
fellow-servants also and their brethren, who should be killed even as 
they were, should have fulfilled their course. 

12. And I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great 
earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole 
moon became as blood; 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 65 

13. And the stars of the heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig tree 
casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind. 

14. And the heaven was removed as a scroll when it is rolled up; and 
every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 

15. And the kings of the earth, and the princes, and the chief cap- 
tains, and the rich and the strong, and every bondman and freeman, hid 
themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains; 

16. And they say to the mountains, and to the rocks, Fall on us, and 
hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the 
wrath of the Lamb: 

17. For the great day of their wrath is come; and who is able to 
stand? 

CHAPTER VII. 

Supplemental Review of the Six Seals. The Ascension 
Against the World Powers Holding the Earth 

1. After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the 
earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that no wind should blow on 
the earth, or on the sea, or upon any tree. 

2. And I saw another angel ascend from the sunrising, having the 
seal of the living God: and he cried with a great voice to the four angels 
to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, 

3. Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we 
shall have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads. 

The Pentecostal Beginning 

4. And I heard the number of them that were sealed, a hundred and 
forty and four thousand, sealed out of every tribe of the children of Israel: 

5. Of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand; 
Of the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand; 

Of the tribe of Gad twelve thousand; 



66 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

6. Of the tribe of Asher twelve thousand; 

Of the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand; 
Of the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand; 

7. Of the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand; 
Of the tribe of Levi twelve thousand; 

Of the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand; 

8 Of the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand; 
Of the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand; 
Of the tribe of Benjamin were sealed twelve thousand. 

9. After these things I saw, and behold, a great multitude, which no 
man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and 
tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, arrayed in white 
robes, and palms in their hands; 

10. And they cry with a great voice, saying, 

Salvation unto our God who sitteth on the throne, and unto 
the Lamb. 

11. And all the angels were standing round about the throne, and 
about the elders and the four living creatures; and they fell before the 
throne on their faces, and worshipped God, 

12. Saying, 

Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, 
and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever 
and ever. Amen. 

13. And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, These that are 
arrayed in the white robes, who are they, and whence came they? 

14. And I say unto him My lord, thou knowest. And he said to me, 
These are they that come out of the great tribulation, and they washed 
their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 

15. Therefore are they before the throne of God; and they serve him 
day and night in his temple; and he that sitteth on the throne shall spread 
his tabernacle over them. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 67 

16. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall 
the sun strike upon them, nor any heat: 

17. For the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall be their 
shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life: and God 
shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



Seventh Seal. The Sabbatic Rest from His Six Days of 

Labor 

1. And when he opened the seventh seal, there followed a silence in 
heaven about the space of half an hour. 



68 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

THE TRUMPETERS— Ch. 8:2; Ch. 11 :15. 

Many interpreters of the Revelation have held that His 
trumpet angels in some manner or other come out of the 
seals. 

Let us make certain of a good guess and show in what 
manner they come out, for thereby is the structure held 
together. 

The gospel was oral from the preaching of the Baptist in 
the wilderness to the death of Paul, who enjoined that the 
gospel be committed to faithful men who should pass it on 
down by tradition. 

Our written gospels do not carry us as far as the Pen- 
tecost, where the ministry began with a gospel of fact, nor 
do we get an account of that day from an apostle direct, but 
from Luke, as we find it in the Acts of Apostles. 

The powers of Heaven were unleashed upon them on 
that great day of the Lord. It was called "the beginning." 

All the seals of the scroll having now been broken, we 
look to see the scroll given directly and at once to John 
without delay. Considering that John wept much with 
anxiety, that no one in Heaven or earth could be found, as 
he supposed, who was able to take the scroll and loose its 
seals, and that the whole onlooking sentient worlds broke out 
in acclamations of joy at the sight of its being taken, we 
should certainly look for its immediate bestowal upon John, 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 69 

as we find it did occur in the Ch. X. No greater urgency 
could be imagined. 

But we are frustrated by the breaking off of the story 
about the scroll to meet with a shocking break and a delay 
in the delivery of it to John by a new intervening program 
being thrust upon our attention. 

This new program is begun by the "standing before 
God" of the seven messengers, who are seen static and wait- 
ing for trumpets, and we must turn at once to Ch. X to find 
Christ and John and the scroll coming together again. Here 
we find John himself acting all his parts among these angels, 
as one of them. Now what is John doing among these 
angels? Christ said he sent the letters to the churches by 
His "angel," that was John. Ch. 22:16. 

It is after the sixth angel's trumpet has sounded we find 
John, which trumpet stands apart from the others in sev- 
eral particulars, and differs from the other trumpeters as 
the apostle Paul differed from the other apostles. To find 
John in this particular place, performing all his offices, and 
that he had to wait for the sixth trumpet, begins to show 
the highly organized character of the vision and to put to 
shame the wild notion that this vision was an ecstasy of a 
fevered brain. There is no "go-lucky" appearance here, but 
order of the highest rank. 

The trumpets are organized on the same pattern as the 
seal's program, and both pragrams have eleven or more ac- 



70 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

tual parts, but their quafity and character are signified by the 
sign and seal of the seven. They stand in groups of four 
and three, four the world side and three the Heavenly side. 

The group of four in both programs comes first and fol- 
lowing the sixth there is a supplement and review. These 
angels are called "the seven," though we shall find there 
were two additions beside John, who comes after the sixth, 
which is the last of labor trumpets. The word ''angel" en- 
tirely foils the surface reader and carries away his mind into 
wandering amid celestial mysteries. His thinking powers 
desert him and among the fogs he finds no path for his feet. 

John says, "And I saw the seven angels, which stand 
before God." Not seven of as though there were many, but 
the particular, distinctive set, which we recognize by their 
relations to Christ, following His seal breaking, His teach- 
ing. 

Christ explained that "the stars in my right hand are the 
messengers to the churches," that is the apostles. 

They stand before God, waiting as in fact after the as- 
cension — waiting for the Spirit and the Pentecost. They 
waited for the Spirit, which was not yet given because 
Jesus was not glorified — obedient to the order of the Spirit. 

Hitherto you have asked nothing in His name," said 
Christ. On this Pentecost they began to preach and to pray 
in that name. It was John who recorded these words from 
Christ, who had said it was "necessary that I go away" in 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 71 

order that the Spirit might be given to enable them to speak 
in the face of the rulers. It was in this attitude of waiting 
for the Pentecost that John saw them "standing before God," 
and Luke tells us they were praying "without ceasing," un- 
til the power came that filled them with holy courage. 

John continues to call Christ "an angel," or "another 
angel," or "a certain angel," and Christ distinctly calls John 
"His angel." Ch. 22:16. "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to 
testify these things to you in the churches." 

Christ's teaching his apostles while he was with them was 
not sufficient. "I have many things to say to you but you 
cannot bear them now." 

"When the Spirit shall come He will teach you what you 
shall say when you are brought before kings and governors. 
He will teach you all things." 

ANOTHER BREAK. 
The same urgency about finding some one who could open 
the book appears here, for these messengers having now re- 
ceived their commission from God and Christ, do not pro- 
ceed at once and directly to their work as all the pressure 
and urgency of the circumstances would lead us to expect. 
There comes this other hitch and a turning aside to add 
another member to their company in a prayer service. Ch. 
8 :2. And this addition does not change the sign of "seven,'' 
and make eight, for they still remain "the seven" without 
regard to numeral values. 



72 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

Let us read Ch. 8 :3 : "And another angel came and stood 
over the altar." 

He had not, like the others, "stood before God," to get 
his place in the company of the selects, though we learn 
from Luke that it was required by Peter that he (the new 
addition) must have been one of those who had "journeyed 
with us from the baptism of John until the day in which 
Jesus was taken up." 

This newly added angel had "a golden censor filled with 
incense," for all the hundred and twenty who were in wait- 
ing for the Holy Spirit had continued in unceasing prayer 
those anxious days of waiting for the promised Comforter. 
This "incense" which he offered, "with all the saints," is 
expressly interpreted to us as "the prayers of all the saints," 
and it was all the saints then present, including the apostles, 
who prayed concerning one who should take the place of 
Judas, who had fallen. From this altar the new angel "took 
the fire and cast it upon the earth," that is "the thunder and 
lightning," which in every occurrence means the preaching 
of that heavenly fire which was to consume the chaff of all 
human works and wisdom and bring in the Heavenly order. 
The same fire issued from the mouth of the two witnesses. 
Ch. 11:5. 



*Prof. Charles of Oxford, who is our leading apocalytic interpreter, 
says this passage was imported into the text at a very early day from 
some source yet unknown. I do not quote his exact words. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 73 

Failing entirely to discern the apostles we find here a 
complete breakdown in the writers hitherto, which has left 
the Revelation of Jesus Christ without authority and made 
void of all its exalted appraisements and is lost to our 
evangelism. 

ANOTHER BREAK AND DELAY. 

Having stood before God and having received their com- 
mission and having now added a new member while wait- 
ing their final preparation, the trumpeters do not even yet 
begin to sound their trumpets. Let us read, "And the seven 
angels which had the seven trumpets 'prepared themselves 
to sound/ " 

They were in hiding till they received the power from 
on high and when that power came there "sat upon their 
heads tongues as of fire," and then and there the trumpets 
of salvation began to sound and every man heard the mes- 
sage in the native tongue of his country, out of which Jews 
had come to the feast of Pentecost at Jerusalem. Here is a 
beginning point on historic and familiar grounds. 

And now the first trumpet sounded. All the apostles 
and disciples bore testimony, with Peter in the lead. In 
this veiled manner only were these trumpeters personal. 
The scene that followed in general is such as the preaching 
of the truth of God begets in the world, and particularly as 
the gospel of self denial and personal holiness. 



74 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

THE GROUP OF FOUR. 

The four trumpets must be treated as a group. It was 
so with the seals. As the first four of the seals dealt with 
Christ's relations to the world powers while he was in the 
world, so in like manner the first four of the trumpets are 
also vague, though there are signs that suggest first the 
immediate struggle at the beginning where martyrdom was 
common, and the mountain on fire and sinking into the sea 
is suggestive of the going down of the Roman empire under 
the gospel power, and the bitter waters at the head or 
"fountains" suggest the Mohammedan foe. In short, these 
antagonisms occurred in succession and are still with us and 
can be seen by all who have the Christian discernment to see 
and to heed the enemy power. 

These four trumpets are like the parables ; they must 
not be pressed into the molds of our western refinements 
and academic definitions. 

THE THREE TRUMPETS. 

The three trumpets are ushered in with a declaration 
and an act that invokes our utmost attention and that 
awakens wonder. 

Ch. 8:13, we read, "And I saw and I heard an angel 
flying in mid Heaven, saying with a great voice : Woe ! Woe ! 
Woe ! for them that dwell on the earth by reason of the 
other voices of the trumpet of the three angels which are 
yet to sound." 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 75 

The marginal reading in the common version renders it 
"A certain angel." 

Another remark upon the text is that the word "dwell" 
is used as against the word "tent" or "tabernacle," for the 
saints are sojourners here and not dwellers or squatters. 
The original word carries the idea of one belonging to the 
earth and to time. These three woes are to such only and 
not to those who are "sealed of God in their foreheads" as 
we learn from the next trumpet. Ch. 9:4. 

The revised versions prefer to use the word "eagle" 
instead of "angel," which they do upon the preference they 
make of the manuscripts. It is of no use to go into any 
textual criticism for the facts clearly show how entirely 
erroneous and misleading is the version that puts a flying, 
shouting eagle in the place of the ascension and judgment 
of Christ. For as Christ did ascend in the course of the 
apostolic office, and as that ascension did mark the two very 
different values of His own and the apostolic ministry, here 
is the place it should be shown. In all the seals breaking, 
where we saw the Father upon His throne and Christ 
standing and taking the book and His relations to the Father 
and to the world powers and to the Spirit, and to the day 
of Pentecost, and the sealing of the Jews, and the answer 
to the cry of the souls of the saints, and the last judgment, 
we entirely missed the apostles. 

These trumpets give us their program. They came out 



76 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

from Christ and He ascended in the midst of their apostoli- 
cal office, and the day of Pentecost which followed his as- 
cension marked the values and power of the apostles into 
the two groups, which are set before us and divided into 
the ministry as personal followers on the thither side, and 
that greater ministry which was led by the Holy Spirit, the 
Advocate and Comforter, on the hither side of that great 
day of the Lord. 

The idea of an "eagle" appearing here to divide these 
trumpets into the two orders as this ascension does, and that 
sets aside the last three as woes to the earthly people, will 
not stand a moment. It is no office for an eagle. It is as 
bad or worse than the common version which makes John 
say, "I stood upon the sand of the sea." Ch. 13:1. 

Our revisers corrected the text in this instance, Ch. 13:1, 
and put the old dragon, called satan and the devil, standing 
upon the sand of the sea, where he belonged, in order to 
call up from the deep his servant, the great beast. 

Here is again this ascension of Christ, Ch. 8:13, as we 
saw it in Ch. 7:2. He challenges His world of enemies, 
who are not sealed of God. Ch. 9:4. 

It was the turning point in both programs. Both min- 
istries lay in two values across the day of Pentecost. 

All the Christian gospel depended upon the resurrec- 
tion which implied the glorification and the great day of the 
Spirit. To follow Christ no further than as He was a teacher 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 77 

on earth and to stop there is a forshortening of His gospel 
of salvation and would be to nullify the full authority which 
Christ established. His authority was suspended on the ful- 
filling of his promise to send the Spirit to rebuke the world 
of its sin in rejecting Him and to offer redemption of the 
race. 

It is the ascension that divides all the programs into 
groups. Finding the plot of these programs in our historic 
gospel we have a historic basis for these programs which end 
in a definite prediction, thus combining in one view the past 
and the future, or laying prediction upon the forms of things 
that were, or a laying substance of things to come upon the 
shadows of things that were. "Come up hither and I will 
show you things which shall come to pass hereafter." 



78 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

THE GREAT NEW PENTECOSTAL BEGINNING 

The Three Woe Trumpets. 

Peter and Paul are in shadow but John is here on earth 
in full view unveiled. 

The fifth trumpet opens the new order from below, from 
the pit. The fifth seal had disclosed the voice from the 
martyrs' souls on high. The fifth trumpet is a reply to the 
Pentecost from on high when heaven opened and the powers 
of God were descended and let loose upon the world of sin. 

It is a changed form of the same lesson as the dragonades 
that followed the pale horse from hades, showing the origin 
of the enemies that rose up to oppose the apostles when 
they had begun to preach with their new power of the 
Spirit and demonstration. It is Satan's answer to the 
Pentecost from Heaven. The fuller meaning of the fifth 
trumpet will be given in connection with the dragon in 
Ch. 12. 

The Sixth Trumpet. 

The sixth is the last, that is last of the labor trumpets 
for the seventh is Christ's own and is sabbatic, that is the 
Kingdom for which he taught us to pray. Many breaks 
and delays have occurred. This arrangement does itself 
point to the larger carrying out of the plan of creation 
begun in the Genesis. 

Here we first recognize in this sixth trumpet another 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 79 

addition to the apostles here still called "stars and angels" 
and "trumpeters" and "voices of thunder." 

That is the seven which at the first stood before God, 
having added a new member in a prayer service, Ch. 8 :2-5 ; 
at the close are added to by still another who receives his 
call direct from "the golden altar." 

This one had not stood before God at the beginning, nor 
had he been elected by the other trumpeters in an altar 
service, (the incense which is the prayers of the saints) but 
he does not increase the actual number for they remain 
the seven. 

As already stated this one is given a personal and sepa- 
rate command to do something. 

He is told to "loose the four angels," say agents, which 
are bound in the great river ; and they were loosed. From 
His golden altar Christ directs all authority. The deed had 
a world wide significance. The same four that stood upon 
the four corners of the earth are also bound in the world 
river "spiritually called" Euphrates. No other than the 
sixth messenger was commanded to any special task, Paul's 
command was to preach faith and freedom, to loose the four 
from their vassalage to the old world order. 

When these four are loosed, we see them as the whole 
world let loose, to engage in war, peoples, tribes, tongues 
and nations, idolatrous, wicked, unrepentant. 

They are in bondage to Babylon, "spiritually so called," 



80 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

that is from the seat of all world power, and to set them 
free is ordered. Then follows the great battle and a de- 
scription of the horsemen and their riders and their work 
and its results. 

Circumstances could not make the case of the call and 
ministry of Paul more clear. 

Paul was the apostle expressly called to preach to the 
gentiles. He was "in labors more abundant than they all." 
He was the last to be called to the apostolic office. He says 
he was as "one born out of due time, not having had any 
intimation that Christ was yet to come and with the Book 
of God to that disciple who was first to enlist, and concern- 
ing whom he had said to Peter, "What is it to thee if he 
tarry till I come ?" 

If these circumstances do not convince one that this 
sixth messenger is a veiled reference to the apostle Paul, let 
us go the next step to find John following, who was really 
"last of all" to be called to an office that was new. It is for 
Christ, following the sixth trumpet, we come to John in his 
supreme place and here is the original account of his receiv- 
ing the Scroll, or book, called "the little book" as Christ 
had called his apostles "little children" and as John calls 
his brethren "little children," and more than twenty times 
John calls Christ "the little lamb." That is the precious 
lamb. Why do the translators fail to give "little Lamb?" 
Now it is the precious book that is to be given to John. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 81 

This is to be the second conveyance of it from the Father 
Almighty, and the selection was made to fall on John, "the 
elder John." He was at that time an old man. 

Here then we find John in his own proper place as seer, 
receiving the Revelation following Paul. Beginning then 
with John and reading backward from Ch. 10, we first find 
Paul. And it is true that Martin Luther in looking back to 
the beginning saw Paul as the last witness as he was indeed 
the last of the apostles in their time. But there was a seer 
and a prophet to arise after him. This seer Luther over- 
looked so far as to discredit the wonderful claims and 
appraisements of the Revelation and of Christ's implied 
promise, that John should live till He should come again. 
The Reformation has followed Luther. Paul by his won- 
derful conversion, and by his travels and his preaching, and 
his founding churches, and his many letters, and by having 
an able biographer in Luke, was able to spread the gentile 
gospel out in a broad frontage, which enabled Luther to 
take ready hold of it, and being a man very like Paul, and 
having had a conversion very similar to that apostle, he 
bequeathed to the Protestant Reformation a very strongly 
marked Paulinistic trend. So much so that the Book of the 
Revelation from Christ has been obscured, though its claims 
are so much greater than all other books. 

Looking backward then from Ch. 10, where we find John 
in the original act of receiving the book, we meet Paul, and 



82 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

then back to the fifth trumpet, which is a reply on the side 
of the world, the flesh and the Devil, to that Pentecost from 
Heaven implies Peter's place on that day of Pentecost. 

The three outstanding events that followed the ascension 
were the day of Pentecost, the call of Paul, and the advent 
of Christ in the clouds of Heaven, bringing the book of God 
to deliver to John doomed to lie in sackcloth. Ch. 11. 

The Progress of Time. 

As at the beginning the disciples were constantly inquisi- 
tive about the time, so we moderns seem to think there must 
be some chronological order, but there is none in this sealed 
book, for proper names and places and numerals come under 
the same method being "spiritually so called." But these 
three last trumpets do most specifically mark the progress of 
the trumpet time till the end, beginning with the day of 
Pentecost. The three woes demark the progress and on- 
going of the "hereafter." They are all hereafter. We read, 
"The first woe is past," Ch. 9 .12, "there come yet two more 
woes hereafter." Cr. 11 :14. 

"The second woe is passed, behold the third woe cometh 
quickly." Ch. 11 :14. 

The "third woe" is both a woe to the wicked and the 
crowning weal to the righteous, as we shall see. It follows 
after all the acts of John concerning the vision of the Reve- 
lation after the book has been given to him and the com- 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 83 

missions respecting the delivery of it to the churches. The 
seventh trumpet is still "hereafter." 

Returning then to the sixth trumpet which identifies 
Paul, and following him we see John in his true place as the 
elect seer and writer, we have a book that Paul never saw 
or anticipated, but it gives us Paul's real place in the Chris- 
tian system. It shows us that a new dispensation was here 
begun and that oral tradition was no longer to hold the 
supreme place it had held. In the great number of writings 
that were then current concerning Christ, this was to 
supercede them by its author's own signature as embodying 
all that must be committed to writing and trusted to the 
churches. 

The Book was commanded to be "sealed not up," nor 
added to, nor taken from, but each church was to have all its 
wisdom teachings in common. 

John Received the Book. 

What is John doing here among these trumpeters, I ask 
again ? It is here that he comes out fully to view in his own 
office and person. Here, after Paul, and where the time is 
distinctly noted as "first," "second," and "last." John 
appears before the seventh and last trumpet. Paul is more 
veiled in dramatic forms and back of Paul is Peter deeper 
in the shadows as he passed a new apostle, Matthias, into 
the rank, and as he led on the day of Pentecost which we 



84 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

found in the supplement to the seals. A theologian and 
college president sent to this writer the question, "What 
have you learned from the Book of the Revelation you did 
not know before ?" "I learned Paul's real place in the Chris- 
tian economy," was his answer. "Last of all" was true at 
the time Paul wrote it of his seeing Christ but his churches 
were perishing when Christ came in the clouds of Heaven 
to deliver the book which he had taken from the hand of the 
Enthroned One, and to regain his place as "Alpha and 
Omega." 

The chapter 10 expresses John's relations to Christ and 
to the Spirit and to all his fellow apostles. We shall read it. 
"And I saw another strong angel come down out of Heaven 
arrayed with a cloud." Here it appears again that John 
says "another angel," which we know to have been the 
same, for no other in Heaven or earth could take the book 
to loose its seals or bring it or bestow it. 

The other New Testament writers wrote their pens 
following their minds, but John was told to write what he 
"saw and heard," and it seems certain that his mind did 
not follow his pen, however much he may have tried. He 
wept much because there was no one able to open the book, 
and in that he was mistaken. He was asked who are these 
in white garments about the throne, and he returned the 
answer to the elder, saying "Thou knowest," and at the 
very last he fell down to worship the angel which had led 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 85 

him to witness these scenes, and was forbidden, and when 
he was about to write what the seven thunders uttered, he 
was inhibited from doing so, and when he was to measure 
the temple he was told to "not measure the outer court" 
and warned to not seal up the letters to the churches. 

We read "The rainbow was upon his head, and his face 
was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire, and he had in 
his hand the precious little book open." 

It is a matter of regret that learned interpreters have 
been guessing what book it was that was open and was 
brought to John, as though there could possibly be any other 
book than the one whose seals the messenger had opened 
and concerning which all in Heaven and earth were anxious 
beholders. 

"And He sat his right foot upon the sea and His left 
foot upon the earth, and cried with a great voice as when a 
lion roareth, and when he cried the seven thunders uttered 
their voices." 

It was in the supplemental program following the sixth 
seal that Christ's new relations to the world powers were 
resumed, and also his changed relations to the Spirit and to 
the saints. The same occurs here, that is, the apostles 
appear. John never used the word "apostle" in his gospel 
nor in the Revelation, only that he heard the word called 
from Heaven and saw the names engraved on the founda- 
tion stones of the city of God, New Jerusalem. 



86 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

This loud cry like the voice of a lion that came from 
the bearer of the open scroll, was not a call to John the 
exile at all, but to "the seven voices of thunder," and it 
was they who answered the summons. What the mes- 
senger said John does not tell. When John heard the 
voices of thunder, he would fain have written what they 
uttered and reached for his pen, so to speak, but was 
enjoined from Heaven not to write what the voices had 
uttered but to seal up the same, just as in the case of the 
open letters he was enjoined to "seal not up these words." 
Ch. 22 :10. Those voices of thunder had indeed been hushed 
in death and voluntary writings had begun to take the place 
of the oral tradition. Their gospel had indeed been silenced 
and their "works do follow them" blessed apostles ; how 
very like is this scene to that when upon the "Holy Mount" 
Moses and Elijah were summoned to the presence of 
our Lord to be made signatory to that voice which came 
from Heaven saying, "This is My Son, Hear ye Him." So 
stood John at this transfigured moment to receive His Book. 

A new beginning was to be made when the churches of 
Paul being Romanized as those of Peter were Judaized and 
this return of Christ in the clouds of Heaven in a last will 
and testimony needed to be ratified in the presence of all 
the apostles and that they might thus be made signatory to 
its claims and the presence of Christ, His expected coming 
in the clouds of heaven. It would not be expected that 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 87 

Paul's vision and ministry having been ratified by the whole 
general council and the Holy Spirit present at Jerusalem, 
that the greater vision given to John would be left to his 
single testimony. The Revelation must be made the book of 
all the apostles, as it is of the Father and Son, and Spirit, 
and of John. John was reserved for the last and greatest 
word. 

It is with respect to the other apostles' relations to John 
that we here find that relation set forth. John not having 
a biographer as Paul had in Luke, we miss the results of the 
life and testimony of John's ministry. 

The Oath of God as to the End of the Time. 

"And the Messiah lifted up his hand to Heaven and 
swear by Him that liveth forever and ever, who created the 
Heavens and the earth and the sea, that there should be 
time no longer, but in the days of the voice of the seventh 
angel, when he is about to sound, then is fulfilled the mystery 
of God according to the good tidings which he declared to 
his servants the prophets." Why should any one go to Daniel 
or to any other than to Christ himself and His oath, to 
learn of the time or to substitute solar time for the Spirit's 
and the Bride's own time ? 

Now if the sixth trumpet sets forth the ministry of 
Paul, which it surely does, and John is found following him 
in a supplement to the apostle's program and without a 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 



trumpet, what can the seventh trumpet mean other than 
that it is Christ's own trumpet to be sounded as the message 
of "the eternal gospel" in all the world. Ch. 14:6. When 
it shall begin to sound is clearly after John's own time, a 
time spiritually conditioned not by solar fiat but with his 
right foot upon the sea and his left upon the earth, an all 
comprehensive attitude, a voice from Heaven commands 
John to go and take the book from the hand of the Messen- 
ger, as he had seen the Messenger take it from the right hand 
of the Father enthroned. John obeyed the voice as Peter and 
Paul by vision had done in the greatest moments of their 
lives. John found the scroll sweet to his taste as he had 
been foretold and bitter to his stomach. 

It was sweet in partaking but bitter in retaining. Ah ! 
the dark ages were to follow. That darkness had fallen 
upon Abraham's vision of this ending. The Bride will 
become the harlot. Then woe ! woe ! woe ! 

While in the book of the Revelation we meet first with 
the letters to the churches we find it easier to regard them 
as coming later in the order of the vision itself. The special 
commission to write them in Ch. 1:11, though coming first 
is made to follow in the case now before us. 

The original great commission in Ch. 10:11 is followed 
by the order to write the letters, Ch. 11 :1, under the figure 
of measuring the "temple," which is John's word for church. 
"Church" is a word not found either in his gospel nor in the 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 89 



Revelation, except as he takes it from dictation. But 
"temple" and "tabernacle" and " camp of the saints" are 
words by which he expresses the saints collectively. It is 
in the messages to the churches that we read, "I, Jesus, have 
sent my angel (John) to testify these things to you in the 
churches." Ch. 22:16. 

The Second Subordinate Program. The Spirit. 

Within these trumpets as in the seals we have a sub- 
ordinate program. It pertains to the Spirit and is in har- 
mony with the supplement in the seals in dealing with the 
leading of the Spirit's power, beginning with the Pentecost. 

John is given a reed like unto a rod and is told to 
"measure the temple and its altar and the worshippers." 
Now, as there is but one thing that John is told to do, this 
must refer to his writing the testimony as already cited, and 
no thought of the Jews' temple at Jerusalem, which had 
been long ago destroyed, should enter the mind at all. He 
could not measure it, being in exile, nor if he had been there 
could he measure the worshippers. 

All that the temple ever stood for had been expressed in 
Christ. 

It was not John's measuring rod. It was given to him ; 
Christ dictated the letters, the Spirit advocated them, and 
John wrote them and carried them in one double book to 
the churches. It was received and treasured by the church 



90 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

as it was given to be the word of God most select. 

John was told not to measure "the outer court" that was 
permitted to the use of the gentiles. That is, he was not to 
appropriate the general message designed for the world at 
large to the churches, "rightly dividing the word." Accord- 
ingly we find the sealed message deals with the world in 
general, "the tribes, tongues, peoples and nations," and their 
representatives, the four creatures — four agents holding 
down the earth, and bound in the river Euphrates, being 
bulked or massed and having no selected personal promises 
such as are given to him that overcometh." These masses 
are not numbered nor sealed nor given white linen, nor led 
to fountains of water of ilfe, neither do they sing or pray. 

Other writers of our sacred scriptures show that their 
pens followed their minds, but John clearly shows here that 
his mind only tried to follow his pen. Hence his many 
mistakes. 

A description here follows that sets the double author- 
ship before us by repeated examples. 

Not only the apostles were dramatically summoned to 
confirm the testimony of the Revelation of Jesus Christ 
which God gave to him, but now when John is about to 
write the letters to the churches it is necessary the writing 
should have all the sanctions of all the holy prophets and 
holy scriptures, and to be made signatory to its divine pur- 
pose. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 91 

The prediction that the gentile world shall "tread down 
the holy city," implies the temple and we surely see the 
church at Sardis already dead and the church at Laodicea 
worse than dead, and the rest on their way into Roman 
darkness. God speaks and says against all this "I will give 
to my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy the thousand 
two hundred and three score days clothed in sackcloth." 

It is certainly true to history that the two witnesses 
have been lying in sackcloth a long while. These two wit- 
nesses are Christ and the Spirit, for as John is about to 
write the letters the author Christ and the Advocate, the 
Spirit, are the two witnesses. They ascend together, Ch. 7 :2. 
They exchanged places in pronouncing the promises to him 
that overcometh, and with the Bride and the Lamb at the 
last they bid all to come and drink of the waters of life 
freely. 

"These, my two witnesses," are called "the two proph- 
ets" and the "two olivetrees" and the "two candlesticks that 
stand before the Lord." Out of their mouth proceeds 
fire to consume those who oppose them. These two wit- 
nesses have power to shut Heaven as in the time of Elijah, 
and to turn the waters into blood as in the case of Moses 
and Aaron. That is the Spirit of God has always acted 
double witness. It is an outer and an inner, or a positive 
and negative. This quality of testimony begins with the 
two trees in the garden of Eden, and is standing out in the 



92 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

two covenants to Abraham and the two tables of the law, 
and the two breastplates of the high priest, and the two 
apartments in the tabernacle, and the two mounts of blessing 
and of cursing, and in the New Testament is seen in the 
twin visions of Peter and Cornelius!, and in Paul and 
Ananias, and the book of Revelation ends in presenting the 
two trees of life. 

The "body" of these two witnesses (it is singular) shall 
lie in sackcloth. When these two witnesses have finished 
their testimony "the beast that cometh up out of the abyss 
shall make war upon them and kill them, and their dead 
bodies shall lie in the street of the great city which spiritually 
is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was 
crucified." Here the symbolism is really violent, for it is 
an effort to class Jerusalem with Sodom and Egypt, and 
Babylon called "the great city." To undertake a literal in- 
terpretation of these names of places is utterly ruinous — the 
more absurd because we are expressly told they are "spirit- 
ually so called." That is the most wicked places on earth 
are the great cities, and what is spiritually true of one is 
true of all. They are all crucifiers of Christ. 

Following this setting forth of the Holy Spirit we 
notice, that while Christ is seen standing before God to 
receive the scroll, and the apostles stand before God to 
receive their trumpets, and then elect a new member, and 
are divided into groups of four and three by the ascension, 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 93 

and a new apostle directly summoned in the sixth trumpeter 
and followed by John receiving the Revelation, all accords 
with our New Testament history, but when we come to read 
in the shadows of the eternal Spirit we are led at once into 
Old Testament history, wherein the Spirit of God also, one 
and the same, is comprehensively presented by reference to 
the tabernacle, the temple and to Moses and Elijah, that 
these things belong to this revelation which gathers up all 
the threads of God's wondrous dealings with the race from 
the beginning and sets them in two trees, one of life the 
other of death, the Spirit against the flesh, until all flesh 
shall be ruled by the Spirit in the Kingdom of God. 

This elaborate description of the Holy Spirit comes with- 
in this program of the trumpets and in the supplement of 
that program, and it comes in connection with the order 
given to John to measure the temple and its altar and its 
worshippers and then the measuring rod is given to John, 
and then follows the word of doom for the temple itself and 
the domination of the gentile or heathen world over it. 
Very bitter news to John. Then the subject of the scroll 
continues as the two witnesses are brought to view and the 
prediction made that the beast that cometh up out of the 
pit shall make war upon these two prophets, or witnesses, 
and shall put them to death, and that their dead body 
(singular) shall lie in the street of the great city for a time, 
we may say exactly co-ordinates with the time that the 



94 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

temple is trodden down, or in other words during the time 
of beast dominion. 

But the prediction is that the two witnesses are only dead 
in appearance and that like Christ, they will arise from the 
dead and astound the world. If there is a dead book in our 
big Bible it is the Revelation, which is to a great extent the 
butt of jokes even in learned circles and ever since Luther 
discredited its claims. And even when the hungering people 
ask the Bible teachers for an interpretation they are often 
given a stone. I do not mean to imply that the scroll is the 
only revelation we have but that it is all that it appraises 
itself to be, and that it should now be restored and given the 
honor of the highest "wisdom" and "understanding" to 
which it makes such urgent appeals. 

Was it not the revival of our New Testament writings 
that brought about the great Protestant movement? Was 
not Israel restored by a new reading of the law they had 
trodden under foot? What then shall we expect from the 
rising as from the dead this long buried message? We are 
told what shall happen : "The tribes, tongues, peoples and 
nations," having looked upon the dead body of this testi« 
mony, and having rejoiced and made merry over their 
apparent death, and sending gifts to one another, as Herod 
and Pontius Pilate were made friends the day the Lord was 
crucified, the testimony shall rise, throw off the sackcloth, 
and shall ascend to the throne of God, shall enter the ark of 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 95 

God, shall be the law of the Spirit, the law of God, and 
then the Kingdom of Heaven shall have been declared as 
''come." 

All this is contained within the trumpet's program and 
within its supplement, and within the office of John to "write 
the things thou seest in a scroll and send to the churches," 
and "testify the things that were and the things that are, 
and the things which shall come to pass hereafter," sealed 
up till the time of the end. Have we heaped all authority 
in Heaven and earth upon the shoulders of Paul and erected 
nothing upon the last message from Christ Himself ? 

The manner in which Peter and Paul and John are made 
to appear in these trumpets suggests a comparison of the 
three, especially of Paul and John. 

Peter is deepest in the shadows, being implied in the 
leadership of choosing a substitute apostle to take the place 
of Judas, Ch. 8 :2-5 ; and his leadership on the day of Pente- 
cost which was the pivot on which the claims of Christ 
rested, and which is implied in all the five major programs 
of the scroll, their warp and woof, historical warp and 
prophecy woof. 



96 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

PETER, PAUL AND JOHN. 

Peter, Paul and John. Consider them ! They are the 
mile stones looking toward the Kingdom of God to come. 
Apostles of vision are they. 

Peter was of Judea and the Jews. His great vision came 
to him when he was upon the housetop praying, and was 
hungry from fasting, therefrom his followers made him 
pope, and his holy office much used for gastronomic ends in 
this sham succession of outward show, and the image of 
him remains and is kissed on its wooden toes. St. Peter in 
name, old Jupiter in spirit. 

Paul of Antioch and of the gentiles, a Roman citizen, 
struck down in the highway as a persecutor, fell blind to the 
earth and was so inwardly stamped by the tragedy that he 
never got over the wound, orator, writer, reformer, traveler, 
scholar and martyr. 

John first to enter the discipleship with Andrew, Peter's 
brother, and the last to receive the new testimony long after 
Paul had gone to his reward. 

Called an ignoramus by the doctors of Jerusalem he yet 
makes the highest call for "wisdom" and "understanding," 
and recorded the Revelation of Jesus Christ that suffers 
neither addition nor subtraction. 

Paul was logical and forensic, John was theological, 
poetical and allegorical. Paul moved in a circle of admitted 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 97 

facts toward a conclusion and a climax like an occidental, 
while John strikes to the center at once and radiates in all 
directions like an oriental never closing an avenue to the 
infinite. Paul was the champion of faith and liberty but 
spoke the highest word for love, while John, the apostle of 
love, spoke the highest word for faith when he said : "We 
know." Paul was the master of logic but used the word 
"mystery" four times as often as John, and John the master 
of mystery used the logical word "because" four times as 
often as Paul. 

Paul preached faith as the highest faculty in man, while 
John preached love as the highest attribute of God. Paul 
was perturbed like a reformer, while John was calm like a 
conqueror. Paul plead with men to come out of the world 
into the church, while John lifted Christ up over the world 
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. Paul 
argued like a diplomat, and continues to assert his apostle- 
ship, setting up the new covenant against the old, while 
John presents to us the sight of Moses and the Lamb on the 
good mount Zion singing together "the song of Moses and 
the Lamb," and the redeemed Jew and gentile, in one com- 
pany about the throne of God. Paul was associated with 
Antioch and was revived by Luther to reign here, and ever 
since as he did there ; still feeding babes with milk. 

This our John was son of Zebedee and Siloam, the 
"bosom disciple who did tarry till Christ came "in the clouds 



98 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

of Heaven." With his brother James called "sons of thun- 
der, prophet of fire and sword, he was sent to Samaria to 
pray that the Spirit might now come to those upon whom 
he at one time had asked that fire might fall from Heaven 
to consume. He stood unmoved at the cross when others 
fled, and to him Christ committed the care of his own 
mother, speaking from the cross. He was from Gallilee ; 
place of the dauntless Macabees, himself the bravest and 
tenderest of all the followers of the Galilean Carpenter. 
Now after two thousand years comes to his own champion- 
ship of the Spirit whose presence is to have dominion over 
the world. 

John wrote the letter to the elect lady and her children. 
John was the boy apostle at the beginning, and in old age 
wrote the message that proceeded out of the mouth of his 
Master. 

To the disciples of Paul this must have been a great 
surprise. The account of this coming to John occupies the 
whole supplement to the trumpets, using more space than 
all the six trumpets, that is the entire tenth and eleventh 
chapters. 

The configuration of these trumpeters has thwarted and 
bewildered all the interpreters who failed to discern in those 
acts which made up the apostolic office. These acts give the 
historic base upon which the prediction is formed. 

Not only the apostles are seen in these shadows, but 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 99 

Moses and Elijah are seen again as men who were led by 
the same Spirit that advocates these letters, and that pos- 
sessed and carried John away into the mysteries of the 
beyond. 

The liberty and the contrariety of the acts of the apostles 
is very striking. 

From Peter to Paul there was a precipitous and mighty 
uplift — a leap. 

Peter undertook to add a new apostle to take the place of 
Judas, who by transgression fell. In doing so Peter assumed 
the f ollowing postulates : 

1. That Judas was a real apostle instead of the traitor 
and servant of Satan that he was. 

2. That there must be twelve apostles, and that eleven 
would not be enough. 

3. That to be an apostle one must be chosen who has 
journeyed with us from the baptism of John baptist until 
the day Christ ascended in order to be a full witness. 

4. That two such persons should be selected from the 
body followers of the Master and set forward. 

5. That prayers should be made by the assembly of the 
hundred and twenty disciples present at the choosing. 

6. And that God be invoked that he would cause to fall 
on the one best suited to fill the vacancy made by Judas, who 
alas ! has had a succession in the name of Peter all down the 
history of renegade usurpers of authority. 



100 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

All these conditions, all these six prerequisites of the 
apostolic office were shattered and blown away when Paul 
was called to be the leader of the apostles in the wider circle, 
and Peter's chosen apostle and successor of Judas reappeared 
later in opposition to Christ as popery. 

As Paul's appearance upon the stage of action was with- 
out warning of any kind, and was intended to give a new 
direction to the cause of Christ, SO' was the call of John to. a 
new office, after Paul had written that he supposed himself 
to be the last and one "born out of due time." Our Refor- 
mation having accepted that Paul was made the head of our 
movements as Peter was of the first at the beginning, they 
continue apart and hostile. 

Paul found unfitness at Jerusalem, as Peter did at Anti- 
och, Paul's headquarters. Only one hint of Christ's appear- 
ing again after Paul is found in the words of Christ to 
Peter, "What is it to thee if he (John) tarry till I come." 
"Behold he cometh in the clouds." Ch. 1 :7. 

The seventh trumpet, yet to sound, lies silent under our 
feet in sackcloth. "My two witnesses," Christ dictator and 
the Eternal Spirit Advocate, and at their rising as from the 
dead will the holy city arise from being trodden down and 
the woman will come out of the wilderness, that is the city of 
God come down from Heaven, and the prayers of the souls 
under the altar be answered and the Kingdom of the world 
become the Kingdom of God and His anointed. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 101 



Third Program. The Apostles Stand Before God and 
Receive Trumpets 

2. And I saw the seven angels that stand before God; and there were 
given unto them seven trumpets. 

A New Apostle is Added in a Prayer Service 

3. And another angel came and stood over the altar, having a golden 
censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should add 
it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was 
before the throne. 

4. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went 
up before God out of the angel's hand. 

5. And the angel taketh the censer; and he filled it with the fire of 
the altar, and cast it upon the earth: and there followed thunders, and 
voices, and lightnings, and an earthquake. 

The Holy Spirit Prepares the Apostles by the Gift of 
Pentecost 

6. And the seven angels that had the seven trumpets prepared them- 
selves to sound. 

The Apotles Preach. The First Group of Four Trumpets 
Triumphs Over the Apostles 

7. And the first sounded, and there followed hail and fire, mingled 
with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of the 
earth was burnt up, and the third part of the trees were burnt up, and 
all green grass was burnt up. 

8. And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain 
burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea 
became blood. 

9. And there died the third part of the creatures which were in the 
sea, even they that had life; and the third part of the ships was destroyed. 



102 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

10. And the third angel sounded, and there fell from heaven a great 
star, burning as a torch, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and 
upon the fountains of the waters; 

11. And the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third 
part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, 
because they were made bitter. 

12. And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was 
smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; 
that the third part of them should be darkened, and the day should not 
shine for the third part of it, and the night in like manner. 

The Ascension of Christ and the Three Woes Upon the 
Worldlings 

13. And I saw, and I heard an eagle, flying in mid heaven, saying 
with a great voice, Woe, woe, woe, for them that dwell on the earth, by 
reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, who are 
yet to sound. 



CHAPTER IX. 



The Mock Pentecost From Belozv by Persecution and First 
Woe to the Wicked 

1. And the fifth angel sounded and I saw a star from heaven fallen 
unto the earth: and there was given to him the key of the pit of the 

abyss. 

2. And he opened the pit of the abyss; and there went up a smoke 
out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air 
were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 

3. And out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth; and 
power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. 

4. And it was said unto them that they should not hurt the grass of 
the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only such men 
as have not the seal of God on their foreheads. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 103 

5. And it was given them that they should not kill them, but that 
they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the 
torment of a scorpion, when it striketh a man. 

6. And in those days men shall seek death, and shall in no wise find 
it; and they shall desire to die, and death fleeth from them. 

7. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared for 
war; and upon their heads as it were crowns like unto gold, and their 
faces were as men's faces. 

8. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as 
the teeth of lions. 

9. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the 
sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots, of many horses rushing 
to war. 

10. And they have tails like unto scorpions, and stings; and in their 
tails is their power to hurt men five months. 

11. They have over them as king the nagel of the abyss: his name 
in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek tongue he hath the name 
Apollyon. 

Second Woe to the Unsaved 

12. The first Woe is past: behold, there come yet two Woes here- 
after. 

Call and Ministry of the Apostle to the Gentiles 

13. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the horns 
of the golden altar which is before God, 

14. One saying to the sixth angel that had the trumpet, Loose the 
four angels that are bound at the great river Euphrates. 

15. And the four angels were loosed, that had been prepared for the 
hour and day and month and year, that they should kill the third part 
of men. 



104 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

16. And the number of the armies of the horsemen was twice ten thou- 
sand times ten thousand: I heard the number of them. 

17. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on 
them, having breastplates as of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone; 
and the heads of the horses are as the heads of lions; and out of their 
mouths proceedeth fire and smoke and brimstone. 

18. By these three plagues was the third part of men killed, by the 
fire and the smoke and the brimstone, which proceeded out of their 
mouths. 

19. For the power of the horses is in their mouth, and in their tails: 
for their tails are like unto serpents, and have heads; and with them 
they hurt. 

20. And the rest of mankind, who were not killed with these 
plagues, repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not 
worship demons, and the idols of gold, and of silver, and of brass, and 
of stone, and of wood; which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk: 

War Does Not Produce Repentance Nor Reform 

21. And they repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries, 
nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. 



CHAPTER X. 



Great Supplement. The Original Act. Christ Descends 

With the Book Whose Seals He Has Broken. Christ Calls 

the Apostles Into His Presence Before Bestowing the Book 

Upon John 

1. And I saw another strong angel coming down out of heaven, 
arrayed with a cloud; and the rainbow was upon his head, and his face 
was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire; 

2. And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right 
foot upon the sea, and his left upon the earth; 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 105 



3. And he cried with a great voice, as a lion roareth: and when he 
cried, the seven thunders uttered their voices. 

4. And when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about 
to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying, Seal up the things 
which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. 

5. And the angel that I saw standing upon the sea and upon the earth 
lifted up his right hand to heaven, 

6. And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created the 
heaven and the things that are therein, and the earth and the things 
that are therein, and the sea and the things that are therein, that there 
shall be delay no longer: 

The Time of the Kingdom of God Foretold Makes Oath of 

God 

7. But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about 
to sound, then is finished the mystery of God, according to the good 
tidings which he declared to his servants the prophets. 

8. And the voice which I heard from heaven, / heard it again speak- 
ing with me, and saying, Go, take the book which is open in the hand 
of the angel that standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. 

9. And I went unto the angel, saying unto him that he should give 
me the little book. And he saith unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it 
shall make thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth it shall be sweet as honey. 

10. And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; 
and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and when I had eaten it, my 
belly was made bitter. 

The Original Great Commission to Testify the Sealed 
Message to All Nations 

11. And they say unto me, Thou must prophesy again over many 
peoples and nations and tongues and kings. 



106 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

CHAPTER XI. 

Order to Measure, That is, to Write the Letters to the 
Churches 

1. And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and one said. Rise, 
and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship 
therein. 

2. And the court which is without the temple leave without, and 
measure it not; for it hath been given unto the nations: and the holy city 
shall they tread under foot forty and two months. 

My Two Witnesses — Christ, Who Dictates, and the Spirit, 
Who Advocates Saying, "Let Him That Hath an Ear, Hear' 

3. And I will give unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a 
thousand two hundred and three-score days, clothed in sackcloth. 

4. These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks, standing 
before the Lord of the earth. 

5. And if any man desireth to hurt them, fire proceedeth out of 
their mouth and devoureth their enemies; and if any man shall desire 
to hurt them, in this manner must he be killed. 

6. These have the power to shut the heaven, that it rain not during 
the days of their prophecy: and they have power over the waters to turn 
them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague, as often as 
they shall desire. 

7. And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that 
cometh up out of the abyss shall make war with them, and overcome 
them, and kill them. 

8. And their dead bodies lie in the street of the great city, which spir- 
itually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. 

9. And from among the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations 
do men look upon their dead bodies three days and a half, and suffer not 
their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 107 

10. And they that dwell on the earth rejoice over them, and make 
merry; and they shall send gifts one to another; because these two 
prophets tormented them that dwell on the earth. 

11. And after the three days and a half the breath of life from God 
entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell 
upon them that beheld them. 

12. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, 
Come up hither. And they went up into heaven in the cloud; and their 
enemies beheld them. 

13. And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth 
part of the city fell; and there were killed in the earthquake seven thou- 
sand persons: and the rest were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of 
heaven. 

The Third Woe and the Crowning Joy. Christ's Own 

14. The second Woe is past: behold, the third Woe cometh quickly. 

Trumpet 

15. And the seventh angel sounded; and there followed great voices 
in heaven, and they said, 

The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our 
Lord, and of his Christ: and he shall reign for ever and ever. 

16. And the four and twenty elders, who sit before God on their 
thrones, fell upon their faces and worshipped God, 

17. Saying, 

We give thee thanks, Lord God, the Almighty, who art 
and who wast; because thou hast taken thy great power, and 
didst reign. 

18. And the nations were wroth, and thy wrath came, and 
the time of the dead to be judged, and the time to give their 
reward to thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and 
to them that fear thy name, the small and the great; and to 
destroy them that destroy the earth. 

19. And there was opened the temple of God that is in heaven; and 
there was seen in his temple the ark of his covenant; and there followed 
lightnings, and voices, and thunders, and an earthquake, and great hail. 



108 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

THE KING'S TRUMPET. 

Toward the seventh trumpet, all that has gone before 
looked as the outcome and end of the apostolic ministry, 
which followed Christ as Revealer of the Father Almighty. 
The steps take account of the time: It is the last of the 
three woe trumpets. It is the seventh. It had not yet 
sounded when John wrote. He accepted and recorded it as 
that which "shall come to pass hereafter." It is the last of 
those trumpets which are expressly stated — are to follow. 
Ch. 8:13. "The first woe is passed, there are two more 
hereafter." "The second is past and behold the third 
cometh quickly." To deliver this message Christ sat 
His right foot upon the sea and His left foot upon 
the earth, and in this all embracing attitude raised His 
right hand to Heaven to swear that when the seventh 
trumpet, which had lain so long in sackcloth, should begin 
to sound there shall be no more delay. Then the mystery of 
God should be finished according to His promise to His 
servants. Then the voice from Heaven shall shout "now 
is come the Kingdom of God and His Christ." "He shall 
reign forever and ever." Then the nations shall be angry ; 
then the time of the dead to be judged ; then the rewards 
shall be given to His servants. That time is yet to come. 
John following Paul is its prophet. 

This trumpet is the last of the three woes to the wicked 
and is also the crowning weal to all the saved. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 109 

We read, "The seventh angel sounded; and there fol- 
lowed great voices in Heaven," and they said : "The king- 
dom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and 
His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever." 

The twenty- four elders fall down and worship God, 
saying, "We give Thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, 
which art, and which wast, because Thou hast taken Thy 
great power and didst reign." 

We have "Which is to come," Ch. 1 :4 and 1 :8 and 4 :8, 
but now we have it "Art come." 

This trumpet follows the ascent of the two witnesses. 
"And there was opened in Heaven the temple of God, and 
there was seen in His temple the ark of the covenant, and 
there followed lightnings and voices and thunder and earth- 
quake and great hail." The Kingdom will then have come. 
It is here the Chapter four may be read. The world powers 
have come into subjection to Christ, and we find them as the 
sign of four great beasts, or living ones, about the throne 
worshipping God in company with the elders and the white 
sea of the saved, and the lamps or candlesticks, where all 
is static, except that day and night praises go up to the 
throne and to God, who has finished the redemption scheme 
so far as to bring the nations under His sway. The King- 
dom is delivered to the Father ; the name of Christ does not 
appear in the Ch. 4. 

The four living creatures having the outward aspect of 



110 THE KINGS TRUMPET 

beasts are composed entirely of eyes ; that is they represent 
"the tribes, tongues, peoples and nations," just as our na- 
tional flags represent the nations. They are as horses going 
forth on the earth, then they are as the four angels of evil 
standing and holding down the earth, and then are bound in 
the universal world order in the river Euphrates, and are let 
loose by the sixth trumpet, and at last we shall see them lead 
the nations into the holy city, being converted. 

When the seventh trumpet begins to sound the "Nations 
are wroth," and so while in the other instance they, as the 
four beasts, are mentioned as being with the elders, they are 
missing here at the end. The Kingdom of man has become 
the Kingdom of God and His Christ." 

In point of time there is nothing further. We are read- 
ing in lines as one would write the history of our country, by 
first writing the history of our presidents from first to last, 
and then a new line of our supreme court, and then of our 
congresses from first to last, and projecting them into the 
future. In each line we would have a part of the history as 
these are dependent parts of the full history. 

Of the two great programs to follow we shall find no 
trace of history but Christ and the apostles continue to give 
form in part to the plan. As the church was the result of 
the day of Pentecost, following the ascension of Christ and 
the gift of the Spirit and the preaching of the apostles in our 
gospel it immediately follows these acts. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 111 

THE CHURCH. 

The order we found was that Christ came first as re- 
vealer and second that the apostles follow Him as heralds 
with trumpets, and in the supplement of that program we 
found a subordinate program of the Spirit, and now we find 
another minor program of the church very brief, but it 
brings the history up to the time of the Revelation to John 
and predicts its future, which explains why the book was 
sweet to the taste but bitter to the reflection when under- 
stood. 

The great wonder which John saw in heavenly glory 
was the church in the figure of a woman clad with the sun, 
and the moon under her feet, and wearing a golden crown, 
having the twelve stars, and being clothed with all the glory 
of the skies. But she is in delightful agony, about to deliver 
a son, who is to "rule the world with a rod of iron," which 
portends the overthrow of Satan who had offered to give all 
the kingdoms of the world to Christ if He would fall down 
before him and worship. That is just what Domitian the 
Roman emperor, had demanded of all the inhabitants of 
the world, and was the cause of John being in exile and the 
coming of Christ to reaffirm His divine Lordship. 

The woman so gloriously apparreled represents the 
church as it came fresh, new born from the Holy Spirit on 
and following the day of Pentecost, when the disciples re- 
fused to call anything their own but "had all things in 



112 THE KING'S TRUMPET 



common," and rejoiced in the loving fellowship from house 
to house. 

This was a provoking situation for the enemy who is 
represented as standing before the church, which was deliv- 
ering sons to God, three thousand the first day, and thou- 
sands of thousands following, which the dragon persecuted 
and followed up as we see in the last verse of this chapter 
and still see in actual practice. 

There is such brevity here as causes confusion, for the 
dragon seems to be ready to devour Christ before He is 
born, and this is what Herod would have done, but the 
nearest he could come to being the devil he really was, he 
could only destroy all the infants under two years old. But 
Joseph and Mary warned in vision, as the wise men also had 
been, fled into Egypt with the child and foiled the satanic 
plot. In this tragedy we strongly sense the transaction of 
the temptation of Adam and Eve also, and the part which 
Satan played in that history. 

"The child was caught up to God in Heaven," but our 
idea of Heaven asks how the dragon could be in Heaven? 
But Heaven as used here is not a place any more than the 
pit or hades is a hole in the ground, but all the conflict here 
is in this world, angels and devils alike, and it was the 
dominion of the world about which the struggle was waged. 

The woman who delivers the sons of God we read, "fled 
into the wilderness," seemingly of her own accord, but the 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 113 

doubling of the imagery represents that she "was given the 
two wings of the great (Roman) eagle," and that she 
accepted help from the world, that is the earth in her escape, 
and that she found her way into the wilderness where she 
is to remain, let us say literally, till the end of the beastly 
reign on the earth. The next sight we get of her she is the 
drunken harlot astride the great beast in the wilderness, and 
God calling His people to come out of her and "be separate," 
and last of all we see the world powers turning against her 
and utterly burning her with fire. 

It is seen that here is confusion of situations and adverse 
contents, not only between satan and the church, but within 
the churches at that very moment, for we find John the 
saint in exile, and Antipas the martyr, and the Balaamite 
and Nicolaitan teachers in the same churches showing how 
mixed the church had become in John's time of exile, one 
church entirely dead and another that would be better either 
cold or hot, and ready to be spewed out of the Master's 
mouth. 

We have therefore four descriptions of the four states of 
the church. 

The first in order is here in this picture of the glorified 
woman, and the second is the description of the churches 
as we find in the letters, and the third is the woman fleeing 
into the wilderness, where she is next seen as sitting upon 
the great beast sought unto by the kings and mighty men 



114 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

of the earth, herself now "drunk with the blood of the 
saints." From this point God calls upon His servants to 
come out of her, and then the new time has come which is 
described as the fall of Satan from earthly dominion, and 
the casting of the beast and false prophet into the lake of 
fire and brimstone, and the judgment of the rebels who 
follow them ; and on the other hand the two witnesses aris- 
ing from sackcloth and death, and the woman coming out of 
the wilderness, and the souls of the martyrs answered, and 
the temple of God arising from under the feet of the nations, 
and the nations themselves bringing their riches within the 
holy city, that is not the church in the old sense at all but 
the Kingdom of God. Are we not to learn that as our 
country could not stand part autocratic and part free, neither 
can a church be Christian and live in a heathen or a neutral 
state. 

The submergence of the church as a trodden down city 
and temple, and as a woman in the wilderness and "the 
testimony of Jesus which is the Spirit of prophecy/' in 
sackcloth and appearing to be dead, the souls under the 
altar awaiting to be justified, are co-ordinate in one and 
the same condition. So also the opposing forces await a 
common and cotemporary defeat and submergence which 
simplifies the sum of all the promises on one hand and all 
the judgments on the other. 

The Son who escapes the devouring dragon meets the 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 115 

enemy in a battle. He as Michael against the great red 
dragon, whose tail draws down the stars, such as Ananias and 
Saphira and Judas, and who desired Peter, (who more than 
once played the devil), that he might be sifted as wheat in 
this fight is foiled, and then defeated, for the apostles 
wrought wonders of power and goodness that won the 
hearts of the oppressed. The dragon knew he had but a 
"short time" and was wroth and made war with the rem- 
nant of her seed which keep the commandments of God and 
the testimony of Jesus." Those faithful souls at Sardis 
where the church had died, were the forerunners of those 
who through all the dark centuries kept to the testimony and 
served Christ when there was no church. 

The woman was helped in her flight. The "wings of the 

(great eagle" were given to her and the earth helped and 
protected her when she began to listen to Jezebel and 
Balaamite teachers. 

The overthrow of Satan brings us again to the conclusion 
or end, for we read : "I heard a loud voice saying now is 
come salvation and strength and the Kingdom of God, and 
the power of His Christ for the accuser of our brethren is 
cast down which accused them day and night. For they 
overcame him by their testimony to the blood of the Lamb." 
It was this way Christ conquered. "Therefore rejoice ye 
Heavens and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabitants 
of the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to 
you having great wrath." 



116 THE KING'S TRUMPET 



CHAPTER XII. 

The Church as it Began on the Pentecost 

1. And a great sign was seen in heaven: a woman arrayed with the 
sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve 
stars; 

2. And she was with child; and she crieth out, travailing in birth, and 
in pain to be delivered. 

3. And there was seen another sign in heaven: and behold, a great red 
dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven 
diadems. 

4. And his tail draweth the third part of the stars of heaven, and 
did cast them to the earth: and the dragon standeth before the woman 
that is about to be delivered, that when she is delivered he may devour 
her child. 

5. And she was delivered of a son, a man child, who is to rule all 
the nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, 
and unto his throne. 

What Became of the Church 

6. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place 
prepared of God, that there they may nourish her a thousand two hun- 
dred and threescore days. 

7. And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels going forth 
to war with the dragon; and the dragon warred and his angels; 

8. And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in 
heaven. 

9. And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is 
called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world; he was cast 
down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 117 

10. And I heard a great voice in heaven, saying, 

Now is come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom 
of our God, and the authority of his Christ: for the accuser 
of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our 
God day and night. 

11. And they overcame him because of the blood of the 
Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they 
loved not their life even unto death. 

12. Therefore rejoice, heavens, and ye that dwell in them. 
Woe for the earth and for the sea: because the devil is gone 
down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath 
but a short time. 

13. And when the dragon saw that he was cast down to the earth, 
he persecuted the woman that brought forth the man child. 

14. And there were given to the woman the two wings of the great 
eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness unto her place, where she 
is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of 
the serpent. 

15. And the serpent cast out of his mouth after the woman water 
as a river, that he might cause her to be carried away by the stream. 

16. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth 
and swallowed up the river which the dragon cast out of his mouth. 

17. And the dragon waxed wroth with the woman, and went away 
to make war with the rest of her seed, that keep the commandments of 
God, and hold the testimony of Jesus: 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The Dragon Calls Up His Helper From the Sea 

1. And he stood upon the sand of the sea. 

And I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and 
seven heads, and on his horns ten diadems, and upon his heads names of 
blasphemy. 



118 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

2. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet 
were as the jeet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the 
dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority. 

3. And / saw one of his heads as though it had been smitten unto 
death; and his death-stroke was healed: and the whole earth wondered 
after the beast; 

4. And they worshipped the dragon, because he gave his authority 
unto the beast; and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto 
the beast? and who is able to war with him? 

5. And there was given to him a mouth speaking great things and 
blasphemies; and there was given to him authority to continue forty and 
two months. 

6. And he opened his mouth for blasphemies against God, to blas- 
pheme his name, and his tabernacle, even them that dwell in the heaven. 

7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to 
overcome them: and there was given to him authority over every tribe 
and people and tongue and nation. 

8. And all that dwell on the earth shall worship him, every one 
whose name hath not been written from the foundation of the world in 
the book of life of the Lamb that hath been slain. 

Creed and Discipline of the Believers 

9. If any man hath an ear, let him hear. 

10. If any man is for captivity, into captivity he goeth: if any man 
shall kill with the sword, with the sword must he be killed. Here is the 
patience and the faith of the saints. 

The Second Beast, Called the False Prophet, Pretending the 
Office of the Holy Spirit and Creates a False and Mock 

Church 

11. And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had 
two horns like unto a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 119 

12. And he exerciseth all the authority of the first beast in his sight. 
And he maketh the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first 
beast, whose death-stroke was healed. 

13. And he doeth great signs, that he should even make fire to come 
down out of heaven upon the earth in the sight of men. 

14. And he deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by reason of the 
signs which it was given him to do in the sight of the beast; saying to 
them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the 
beast who hath the stroke of the sword and lived. 

15. And it was given unto him to give breath to it, even to the image 
of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause 
that as many as should not worship the image of the beast should be 
killed. 

16. And he causeth all, the small and the great, and the rich and 
the poor, and the free and the bond, that there be given them a mark 
on their right hand, or upon their forehead; 

17. And that no man should be able to buy or to sell, save he that 
hath the mark, even the name of the beast or the number of his name. 

18. Here is wisdom. He that hath understanding, let him count the 
number of the beast; for it is the number of a man: and his number is 
Six hundred and sixty and six. 



120 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

THE DRAGON. 

It was the place for the dragon to appear. The Pente- 
cost from above had turned human nature upside down. 
They were giving away all they had, all things in one new 
family. It went to the bottom of selfishness as it has never 
done since. A crowd or convention is a dangerous thing. 
It looks like a concerted action, and among the common 
people must under the old world order be suppressed. We 
have in the fifth trumpet the opening of the mock Pentecost 
from below, "the pit of the abyss." It is opened by the fallen 
angel who has the name Abbadon in the Hebrew, and 
Appollyon in the Greek tongue, and further described as 
the star or angel that fell from Heaven, as Christ in vision 
said : "I saw Satan as lightning fall from Heaven." He is 
King over these destroyers. 

This mock Pentecost, this saternalia from the pit of the 
abyss, the fifth trumpet, is the reply of all the powers of 
Satan to the Pentecost from Heaven. It follows immedi- 
ately on the ascension of Christ. Ch. 8:13. It follows the 
group of four. 

It is this fact which enables us to discern its purport. It 
sends out its apostles of destruction to devour and torment 
against the apostles sent out by Christ from Pentecost to 
bless and save. They combine all that is ugly and despised 
in insects, and having bodies like horses prepared for war, 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 121 

and heads like lions, and faces like men, and hair like 
women, suggesting a kind of neuter gender creature de- 
scribed by celibacy or false sanctimony, and that men under 
their power will seek to die and shall not be able to do so 
from the fear of a purgatory, that can wash out sins that 
Christ did not provide for, are characteristics of the admin- 
istration of this fallen angel, whom in the Ch. 12 is described 
as "the dragon the old serpent, called Satan, and the devil 
whose tail draws down the stars of Heaven, who has seven 
heads to imitate the Creator's seven days of creation, and 
which sign is rightly given to all the heavenly agencies, and 
the ten horns he wears to pretend to the ten civil laws of 
Moses and of God. He is the star that fell from Heaven 
and opened the pit of the abyss against the blessed Pente- 
cost. No other picture of all that is infernal was ever 
drawn that will equal this mock Pentecost of the fifth 
trumpet. There is the beginning place of all the evil forces 
at work, as the glorious Pentecost from Heaven was the 
great beginning of the reign of Christ on earth, which has 
had so many backsets by those who will not "seek first the 
Kingdom of God and His righteousness," who do not 
"hunger and thirst for righteousness," who pretend they 
cannot understand the Revelations of God, who make so 
many excuses as Christ pointed out in the parables which 
He spoke. If the Hebrews and the Greeks had a name for 
this fallen star, it was no invention of John's, but John 



122 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

calls him by four other names, and in all he has seven names, 
imitating God's signs of Creator while he is the real de- 
stroyer. He is also "an eighth." John says he is "the great 
red dragon/' "and that by his tail he brings down the stars 
from Heaven." There was Judas and Ananias and his 
wife, and there were the churches, Ephesus, John's own 
home, bereft of her first love. 

At Smyrna the devil was about to cast some into prison, 
Baalamites were teaching in the church at Pergamos, and 
Nicolaitans also. At Thyatira, Jezebel was deluding the 
believers, the church at Sardis was dead, and the church at 
Laodicea was lukewarm, which was worse than death itself. 
In watching some of our modern evangelism can we imagine 
the church of Ephesus writing to Pergamos to please send 
us Rev. Fallen Star Baalam for evangelist, to hold pro- 
tracted meetings and bring Jezebel of Thyatira along for 
singing evangelist? The dragon was cast down and know- 
ing he had "but a short time," is filled with wrath and he 
poses. He stood upon the sand of the sea to call up his 
successor and heir to his throne. Fallen from Heaven he is 
standing before the woman then upon the sand of the sea. 

THE GREAT BEAST. 

"The dragon stood upon the sand of the sea." The old 
version had it that it was John who stood upon the sand of 
the sea, which left the reader in utter darkness, for such a 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 123 

statement has no kind of connection with the subject matter 
and disconcerts the stage and breaks the program. 

The sea is the people and from among the people the 
dragon calls up his successor, the beast, and bestows upon 
him all his authority and power. 

This great beast takes the place of the dragon as vice- 
gerent, and how shocking to put St. John in such a position ! 
But this shows how easy it is to go amiss on a work even 
though it is so well constructed. It is in the acts and atti- 
tudes and relations of these parts that we can see clearly the 
intent of the mind that set them before us, even if John did 
not. 

The great beast has the seven heads and ten horns of the 
father dragon, and the crowns also, only he wears ten 
crowns upon his ten horns instead of the seven which the 
dragon wears upon his seven heads. His head was covered 
with the names of blasphemy. Against the red dragon's 
color, the beast is spotted of no decided color, and hard to 
detect as all spotted animals are. He has feet that wabble 
about like a bear, and unlike the ox that moves straight 
forward under the yoke. His mouth was like the mouth of 
the lion, loud and pretentious. The leopard and bear and 
lion are quite a mix, and they show close relations to the 
creatures that came up out of the pit of the abyss out of the 
deeps of human depravity. 

The power and throne and authority of the beast were 



124 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

given to him, and instead of his drawing down the stars 
with his tail he blasphemes the church of Christ, and they 
who tabernacle in it, with loud mouth. 

As the father dragon, the devil, started out to imitate 
God, so this beast wants to play the part of Christ, and he 
has one head put to death saving the other six, and this head 
pretends to a resurrection from the dead and so claims that 
devotion of his dupes that was paid to Christ in sincerity by 
love. When we turn to Ch. 17, we find that this beast is 
further described as having been present and then absent 
a little while, and then returned, facts in the life of Christ 
of which John in his gospel speaks three or more times, as 
things which Christ prophesied and that puzzled both his 
Jew enemies and the apostles, and as Christ bore the church 
on his heart the beast bears the harlot on his back. 

It is thus that we see his aim is to imitate and pretend 
the offices of Christ. He is worshipped by all who dwell on 
and belong to the earth, all except those who have "the seal 
of God in the forehead," those who know the sure from the 
sham. He also makes war against the saints like his father, 
the devil. The order to which he belongs is made manifest 
by the heavenly declaration, that follows this interjected 
truth from Heaven. "If any man hath an ear let him hear ; if 
any man is for captivity into captivity he goes ; if any man 
shall kill with the sword with the sword must he be killed. 
Here is the faith and patience of the saints." That was the 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 125 

creed and discipline of the first Christians, and those who 
had been slain were crying to the Master to avenge them of 
their blood, and He promised to do so, and the sixth seal 
gave us a description of his retaliation including retribution 
for his own murdering. 

Now these imitative programs easily suggest that further 
imitation parts of the heavenly gospel program will follow, 
which will enable us to hold all these strange symbols and 
attitudes in orderly place, and enable the mind to follow the 
spiritual forces at work in the greatest battle ever to be 
fought. 

THE TWO HORNED BEAST. 

The two horned beast is called "the false prophet." He 
has two horns and he has two fathers in the dragon and the 
great beast. He comes up out of the earth, against the 
Spirit who came down from Heaven. To come up out of 
the earth or out of the sea or out of hades as the fourth 
horse, or out of the pit of the abyss as the beast, Ch. 11 :7, 
must not be taken as actual localities or as from different 
places or sources as though there were any significance in 
these descriptions, for they are one in the sense correspond- 
ing to the Kingdom of Heaven out of which Christ came 
and the Spirit and all the divine powers. It is a complete 
offset, a mock. 

The two horns of this false prophet are in imitation of 



126 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

the double testimony of the Holy Spirit which, as we saw, 
is always dual, being an inside and an outside, or a positive 
and a negative, or otherwise a double. 

Our human nature expresses itself in three manifesta- 
tions as father and mother and child, and we have a three- 
fold expression of the divine nature in Father and Son and 
Spirit, and now having seen how the Father and Son rela- 
tions are imitated by the dragon and great beast, we easily 
infer that this two horned beast is to play the imitation part 
of the Spirit. We read: "And I beheld another beast 
coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a 
lamb and he spoke like the dragon." Here is the same 
double nature we saw in the dragon with a tail that drew 
down the stars, and the beast that blasphemed the saints, 
which goes to show the common characteristics of all that 
come up out of "the pit" or "hades." 

The voice of the dragon implies his doctrine and his 
nature, but he also "exercises all the authority of the first" 
or great beast. And as the great beast got all his authority 
and power from the dragon, we have the whole combination 
in action in this second beast. Also as the first beast "de- 
ceives them that dwell on the earth," so this beast of the 
two horns "deceiveth them that dwell on the earth," by the 
signs which he was given power to do in the sight of the 
dragon, and great beast overseers. And he compels his 
people to worship "the great beast that had the stroke in 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 127 

one head and was healed," and of course including the 
dragon. 

The signs by which he deceived the people was that "he 
commanded fire to come down out of Heaven in the sight of 
men." Now it grows clear that his part is to imitate the 
Holy Spirit, that gave the sign of his presence on the day 
of Pentecost in the tongues of fire that sat upon the apostles' 
heads, and the tongues by which every man of all those 
nations assembled heard the apostles in their own language, 
that so astonished them on that day. 

This false prophet commands his dupes to make an 
image like or resembling the beast and the dragon, and he 
compelled the worldings to worship this image. Here we 
find in it the harlot, the woman in the wilderness. As the 
Spirit on the day of Pentecost created the church in the 
image of God and of Christ, and those who had received 
Christ were constrained by Christ's love to worship God, 
this beast makes it compulsory and commercially profitable 
and necessary to serve the devil. It was the presence of the 
Spirit of God that gave life to the church of Christ, and this 
imitation and mock prophet breathes into this image the 
breath of life and makes it seem alive. He has a branding 
iron as men have who mark their stock, horses and cattle, 
and he marks them all in the hand or forehead to imitate the 
sealing of the saints in their foreheads, and no man of them 
is allowed to buy or sell till he can show the devil's trade 



128 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

mark. This fills out the diabolical trio, the counterfeit of the 
Father, Son and Spirit, and the church and the saints of 
God. It is the diabolical trio, pretending the divine trinity, 
including the mock church and parody of the saints who are 
sealed of God. It was required of those who were deceived 
by the beast that they be marked by the name of the great 
beast and dragon or by the number of their name inclusively. 

The last verse of the thirteenth chapter of Revelation 
has caused a world of speculation in futile attempts to iden- 
tify some particular person or man, who could be known by 
a process or juggling and guessing on the value of arith- 
metical calculations in the Greek or Latin alphabet. 

These efforts entirely missed the scope and range of the 
vision, for it is rather the algebraic "than arithmetical" that 
is needed, as we said. 

The image of the beast was the false church, and of 
course the image of the dragon also and of all who wear the 
mark of the beast and dragon have the family trait the same 
name and sign number belong to all. 

To make sure of the intention and identification the 
appeal is made to "him that hath wisdom." 

We read, "Here is wisdom. He that hath understand- 
ing let him count (or account) the number of the beast (and 
dragon), for it is the number of man (not a man), and his 
number is six hundred and sixty-six." 

That is to say not any one man different from all other 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 129 

men of his kind, but mankind, "the tribes, tongues, peoples 
and nations," who> have not the seal of God in their fore- 
heads. Those who worship the dragon and great beast, and 
the two horned beast and their image, the harlot, all who 
dwell on the earth of the earthly vulgar and deluded herd 
supine-bovine. 

What could be plainer? Seeing God has seven titles in 
the opening chapter as Creator by the seven days of Crea- 
tion, and Christ has seven titles as revealer and dictator of 
the seven letters, and the Spirit is "the seven Spirits" in 
seven warnings, and the church has seven letters, and the 
apostles are held in the Master's hand as "the seven stars" 
of the churches, and the seal of God in the forehead of 
every saved soul, has the seal of the divine seven which 
carries the promise of a Sabbath rest which is to come, 
"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth." 
That is to say, six is the common denominator of all the 
sinful forces exactly as seven is the common denominator of 
all the Christian agencies. 

Six has no Sabbath, no Kingdom of Heaven. The 
dragon is six, the great beast is six, the two horned beast is 
six, and by unavoidable inference the image — the mock 
church is six, and all who have the mark or the name, or the 
number of the beast and dragon and harlot church, are sixes 
in full insignia. 

The church at Laodicea has six words of reproof. The 



130 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

idolators in the war, Ch. 9-20, worshipped six kinds of idols. 
The people who received the brand of cattle were sixes, 
"great and small, rich and poor, bond and free." Six was 
the sign of the heathen mysteries, and the four beasts of 
Ch. 4 each has six wings. They belong to earth and to time 
not to the "forever and ever." The appeal to "wisdom" 
and to "understanding" that precedes this verse calls upon 
one to use his common sense to infer the common denomi- 
nator of each of the two classes. This emphasizes the en- 
treaties which the book makes to get itself read and under- 
stood. 

The efforts to make out Nero, or Domitian, or Napoleon, 
or the German Kaiser as the particular man referred to is 
sadly and grotesquely amiss, for the description includes all, 
both the dupes who make kings and gods of men and those 
who separate them into national flocks and marks them with 
some idolatrous slogan called patriotism, an impersonal 
entiety and abstraction that can neither see nor speak, nor 
walk, nor think, any more than other idols which men create 
and serve as their gods blindly enough, even yet, and in lands 
that are called Christian. There are but two classes. There 
is no division in the heavenly ranks on one side nor in the 
devil's servants on the other. God knows His own. We can 
know a tree by its fruits. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 131 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Fourth Program and Preface to Christ's Office in the Regen- 
eration and Kingdom of God 

1. And I saw, and behold, the Lamb standing on the mount Zion, 
and with him a hundred and forty and four thousand, having his name, 
and the name of his Father, written on their foreheads. 

2. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, 
and as the voice of a great thunder: and the voice which I heard was as 
the voice of harpers harping with their harps: 

3. And they sing as it were a new song before the throne, and before 
the four living creatures and the elders: and no man could learn the 
song save the hundred and forty and four thousand, even they that 
had been purchased out of the earth. 

4. These are they that were not defiled with women; for they are 
virgins. These are they that follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. 
These were purchased from among men, to be the first fruits unto God 
and unto the Lamb. 

5. And in their mouth was found no lie; they are without blemish. 

Christ in The Regeneration 

6. And I saw another angel flying in mid heaven, having eternal 
good tidings to proclaim unto them that dwell on the earth, and unto 
every nation and tribe and tongue and people; 

7. And he saith with a great voice, Fear God, and give him glory; 
for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made the 
heaven and the earth and sea and fountains of waters. 

8. And another, a second angel, followed, saying, Fallen, fallen is 
Babylon the great, that hath made all the nations to drink of the wine 
of the wrath of her fornication. 

9. And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a great 
voice, If any man worshippeth the beast and his image, and receiveth 
a mark on his forehead, or upon his hand, 



132 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

10. He also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is 
prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger; and he shall be tormented 
with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the 
presence of the Lamb: 

11. And the smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever; and 
they have no rest day and night, they that worship the beast and his 
image, and whoso receiveth the mark of his name. 

12. Here is the patience of the saints, they that keep the command- 
ments of God, and the faith of Jesus. 

Blessing 

13. And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write, Blessed are the 
dead who die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they 
may rest from their labors; for their works follow with them* 

14. And I saw, and behold, a white cloud; and on the cloud / saw 
one sitting like unto a son of man, having on his head a golden crown, 
and in his hand a sharp sickle. 

15. And another angel came out from the temple, crying with a 
great voice to him that sat on the cloud, Send forth thy sickle, and reap: 
for the hour to reap is come; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. 

16. And he that sat on the cloud cast his sickle upon the earth; and 
the earth was reaped. 

17. And another angel came out from the temple which is in heaven, 
he also having a sharp sickle. 

18. And another angel came out from the altar, he that hath power 
over fire; and he called with a great voice to him that had the sharp 
sickle, saying, Send forth thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the 
vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. 

19. And the angel cast his sickle into the earth, and gathered the 
vintage of the earth, and cast it into the winepress, the great winepress, 
of the wrath of God. 

20. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and there came 
out blood from the winepress, even unto the bridles of the horses, as far 
as a thousand and six hundred furlongs. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 133 

THE REGENERATION, CHAPTERS 14-16. 

We have traced in the shadows the facts of the gospel 
concerning Christ as the Revealer of God, till we came to 
the sabbatic end. Then we traced the makeup of the apos- 
tolic band and its mission till it came to John in Patmos, and 
there to receive the Revelation of Christ, which speaks in 
prophecy of the seventh trumpet which Christ is to sound 
when the two witnesses arise from oblivion, clothed in sack- 
cloth, and the Kingdom that is promised to come. 

Then we followed the system of counterparts, a strange 
creation of shadowy simulations but very compelling to 
thought, and we answered to the interpretation in this wise : 
"The Kingdom of Heaven is preached and strong men seize 
it by force," as Christ said. Men seek the worship of 
devoted hearts which belong to God only. Men erect their 
own kind into the place of God, and the picture of these 
infernal rulers and ruled, shows us that the Roman empire 
assumed to take over the Kingdom of God and to admin- 
ister it as belonging to and serving the brutal world order 
that came out of hades and ends in the lake of fire and 
brimstone. 

THE THREE PERIODS. 

We see the evangelization as it was at the first and we 
have now come into the Reformation and we look for the 
Regeneration that is to be when the seventh trumpet shall 
sound its message. "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which 



134 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

none of the wicked shall understand." 

We now approach two new programs that correspond 
to the programs of the seals breaking and the trumpetings. 
They pertain respectively to Christ and his apostles in the 
regeneration times. They are companion programs in this 
new role as they were in the seals and trumpets. Here is 
prediction : "They that are wise shall shine as the bright- 
ness of the firmament." 

The programs are in the symbol seven and are divided 
into groups of four and three, the group of the three coming 
first and reversing the order of the seals and trumpets, 
because they come after Pentecost and show no sign of that 
first part in the acts of Christ and His apostles, historically, 
but in fulfillment of the teachings and predictions of Christ 
not his acts past but to come to pass hereafter." 

We miss the horses in these acts, and the signs here em- 
ployed are more attenuated and pass into far reaching antici- 
pations. The very important supplements which followed 
the sixth seal and the sixth trumpet are hardly visible here, 
and only as forms in these two new programs. 

Christ appears again more vividly than at first, and 
instead of riding upon the white horse on earth He now sits 
upon the white cloud above the earth, and instead of going 
forth on the earth He commands the air above, to pronounce 
the everlasting gospel to all nations. 

Then in the beginning as Christ stood before God to 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 135 

receive the scroll, He now stands on Mount Zion to receive 
His Kingdom. Then He had a bow but now it is a sickle to 
reap. "Then shall the many be purified and made white." 

PREPARATION. 

We read, "And I saw and behold the Lamb standing on 
the Mount Zion and with Him the hundred and forty-four 
thousand, having His name and the name of His Father 
written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from 
Heaven as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a 
great thunder. It was as the voice of harpers harping with 
their harps, and they sing as were a new song before the 
throne, and the four living creatures and the elders." The 
Mount Zion and Heaven are not two places, as we said, for 
all the saved are with Him, and John heard their voices in 
Heaven, "And no man could learn that song except the 
hundred and forty-four thousand." That is all who stood 
around the throne in shining apparel. Ch. 7:9. 

These were purchased out of the earth. They were not 
defiled by harlotry. They are virgins as respects idolatry. 
These are they who follow the Lamb whithersoever He 
goeth. They were purchased from among men to be the 
first fruits unto God and to the Lamb. In their mouth was 
found no lie. They are without blemish. Their names are 
in the Lamb's book of life. 

THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL. 
Now follows the great commission. It is declared from 



136 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

the clouds of Heaven. It is to every nation, and tribe, and 
tongue, and people on the earth. It is with the great voice 
that the message is delivered. See Ch. X. "Fear God and 
give Him the glory for the hour of His judgment has come." 
Then He appears as a second angel. As He wrote all the 
letters to the churches under seven titles, or noni de plumes, 
variently impersonating Hismelf, so here He appears as 
seven angels. The Gospel He preaches is so simple, "fear 
God," so in contrast with all eclesiastical machinery, it is 
refershing ! The result of that Gospel Power brought down 
the great city Babylon, that is the spiritual emporium of sin. 
It was the tenth part of the city that fell when the two wit- 
nesses arose from sackcloth. The third act is a warning 
against the worship of the beast and dragon, and false 
prophet, and harlot, and all that belongs to idolatry. 

Then comes in an interjected part as a form that divides 
the two groups, "Here is the faith and patience of the 
saints." This is the second time the faith and patience of 
the saints has been named. They are not of the world order. 
They do not lead captive, nor use the sword, nor in any way 
serve the great beast as their master. 

Then follows this interjection: "Blessed are the dead 
which die in the Lord from henceforth, Yea, saith the Spirit, 
that they may rest from their labors, and their works do 
follow them." This "henceforth" marks a new time in 
which this new song is heard. It is the time of the harvest. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 137 

The scene rests upon those delightful sayings of Christ 
about the harvest in the end of the world order, when the 
Son of man shall sit upon the throne of His Father and 
judge the world in righteousness. "Blessed are the dead," 
whose works will not be lost in the world after that time 
begins. 

The other four parts are divided in pairs. It was so that 
Christ at the first sent out the seventy, two by two, to sum- 
mon His nation to hear the news, the new King's trumpet. 
Again He appears with a golden crown, this time with a 
sharp sickle for the harvest is ripe. 

Then an angel came out of the temple to give command 
to "thrust in the sickle and reap." It was the harvest of 
wheat, and then in another companion act, when an angel 
came out from the presence of God where the altar ever 
burns, was followed by his companion who ordered that the 
sharp sickle be used, that gathers the vine of the earthly 
people, that they be taken without the city and cast into the 
great winepress of the wrath of God, and that the pressure 
be applied by treading down till the blood would flow sixteen 
hundred furlongs, so deep that horses waded it to their 
bridal bits. Here we meet again with the imagery of the 
sixth trumpet and we call it "the battle of Armageddon." 
It is "the wine press of the wrath of God." The imagery 
is of the same purport as the sixth seal, and the sixth 
trumpet. It is the end of the sixth labors in the spiritual 
regeneration. 



138 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

CHAPTER XV. 

Apostles as Avengers in the Regeneration 

1. And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven 
angels having seven plagues, which are the last, for in them is finished 
the wrath of God. 

2. And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire; and them 
that come off victorious from the beast, and from his image, and from the 
number of his name, standing by the sea of glass, having harps of God. 

3. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song 
of the Lamb, saying, 

Great and marvellous are thy works, O Lord God, the Al- 
mighty; righteous and true are thy ways, thou King of the 
ages. 

4. Who shall not fear, Lord, and glorify thy name? for 
thou only art holy; for all the nations shall come and wor- 
ship before thee; for thy righteous acts have been made 
manifest. 

5. And after these things I saw, and the temple of the tabernacle 
of the testimony in heaven was opened: 

6. And there came out from the temple the seven angels that had 
the seven plagues, arrayed with precious stone, pure and bright, and girt 
about their breasts with golden girdles. 

7. And one of the four living creatures gave unto the seven angels 
seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God. who liveth for ever and 
ever. 

8. And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and 
from his power; and none was able to enter into the temple, till the seven 
plagues of the seven angels should be finished. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 139 



CHAPTER XVI. 

1. And I heard a great voice out of the temple, saying to the seven 
angels, Go ye, and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God into 
the earth. 

2. And the first went, and poured out his bowl into the earth; and it 
became a noisome and grievous sore upon the men that had the mark 
of the beast, and that worshipped his image. 

3. And the second poured out his bowl into the sea; and it became 
blood as of a dead man; and every living soul died, even the things that 
were in the sea. 

4. And the third poured out his bowl into the rivers and the foun- 
tains of the waters; and it became blood. 

5. And I heard the angel of the waters saying, Righteous art thou, 
who art and who wast, thou Holy One, because thou didst thus judge: 

6. For they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and blood 
hast thou given them to drink: they are worthy, 

7. And I heard the altar saying, Yea, Lord God, the Almighty, 
true and righteous are thy judgments. 

8. And the fourth poured out his bowl upon the sun; and it was given 
unto it to scorch men with fire. 

9. And men were scorched with great heat: and they blasphemed 
the name of God who hath the power over these plagues; and they 
repented not to give him glory. 

10. And the fifth poured out his bowl upon the throne of the beast; 
and his kingdom was darkened; and they knawed their tongues for pain, 

11. And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains 
and their sores; and they repented not of their works. 

12. And the sixth poured out his bowl upon the great river, the river 
Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way might be 
made ready for the kings that come from the sunrising. 



140 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

13. And I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of 
the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three 
unclean spirits, as it were frogs: 

14. For they are spirits of demons, working signs; which go forth unto 
the kings of the whole world, to gather them together unto the war of 
the great day of God, the Almighty. 

15. '(Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and 
keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.) 

16. And they gathered them together into the place which is called 
in Hebrew Har-Magedon. 

17. And the seventh poured out his bowl upon the air; and there 
came forth a great voice out of the temple, from the throne, saying, It 
is done: 

18. And there were lightnings, and voices, and thunders; and there 
was a great earthquake, such as was not since there were men upon the 
earth, so great an earthquake, so mighty. 

19. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities 
of the nations fell: and Babylon the great was remembered in the sight 
of God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his 
wrath. 

20. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 

21. And great hail, every stone about the weight of a talent, cometh 
down out of heaven upon men: and men blasphemed God because of the 
plague of the hail; for the plague thereof is exceeding great. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 141 

THE APOSTLES EXECUTING JUDGMENTS. 

It was Christ who took the book and loosed its seals, and 
we have just seen that He impersonates Himself as seven 
angels in the sowing and reaping, and then if we read the 
open letters last we are given the explanation in His imper- 
sonating their writers Himself under His seven different 
titles. 

So to the apostles, also, who follow Him as trumpeters 
of the glad tidings, come now in a new program as in judg- 
ment in the time of regeneration, pouring out the vials of 
the wrath of God, and following in the same track as their 
sounding the trumpets. The program not only follows in 
the same track, the first being upon the earth, the second 
upon the sea, the third upon the fountains and rivers of 
waters, and so on, but also while there are the seven vials, 
or bowls, there are more real parts in the program, and while 
the program stands in groups of four and three the group 
of four follows the three as we have said, and as in the 
seals and trumpets the climax of triumph for the Spirit fell 
upon the seventh, which is also the third of its group, we 
have here the climax of judgment falling upon the fourth, 
which is also the seventh, and the climax of judgments and 
is of necessity predictive. 

This evil parody play therefore consisting of the system 
of imitations comes to a climax in defeat. This agrees with 



142 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

the doom to the diabolical forgeries and gives high meaning 
to the warnings of Christ to be awake to the deceptions 
which were sure to come, for the deep sincere devotion of 
the loving heart which Christ won for God by His offering 
is the mightiest asset for the evil heart of the beastly kings 
and mighty men and captains to take to themselves. 

The great supplements which we saw lying between the 
sixth and seventh seals and of the trumpets appears in the 
viols of wrath very dimly, for both these lack the underlying 
form of history being considered entirely upon the proph- 
ecies of Christ rather than upon His deeds, whose shadows 
were the forms upon which those two first programs were 
arranged. 

The last Sunday School lesson called the book of Revela- 
tion, "John's Vision of Heaven," and so quite destroyed its 
meaning, so also do those who call it the New Testament 
Apocalypse, for every forward step was by an apocalypse, 
that is by revelation. The organic structure by this concep- 
tion brings this vision within the grasp of intelligible think- 
ing and meditation and gives fresh meaning to the invitation 
to those who are athirst to come and drink, and the naked 
to be clothed, and the poor to get "gold tried in the fire," 
and the wise to consider to read and to keep those words 
of prophecy. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 143 

PREFACE TO THE SEVEN AVENGERS. CH. 15. 

"And I saw another sign in Heaven, great and marvelous, 
the seven messengers having the seven last plagues, for in 
them is rilled up the wrath of God." There is a strong 
stage setting before all these leading programs. Christ at 
the first stands before the throne to receive the scroll, the 
apostles stand before God to receive their trumpets. The 
Spirit is the two olive trees and two candlesticks, which 
"stand before the Lord of the earth," and the evangels we 
have just seen stand upon the good Mount Zion, and with 
the Lamb, and they sing as it were a new song before the 
throne, and we come to the apostles who follow as avengers, 
and they stand beside the glassy sea of white saints, and with 
Moses and the Lamb stand before God and sing the song 
of Moses and the Lamb. So, too, stood the dragon on the 
sand, looking into the sea, and upon the earth, whence arose 
his successors against the truth from Heaven. The sea of 
glass is mingled with fire and is to be purified thereby and 
we are to have a new start. It is the time of regeneration. 
These two programs differ in many ways from the seals and 
the trumpets. The main difference is that as we said, they 
rest upon the promises of God and the teaching of Christ 
concerning the end of the world, the last things. 

The song of Moses and the Lamb reaches back beyond 
the times of the gospel, and all look forward to the seventh 



144 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

trumpet when all the promises which God made to the 
prophets and apostles will be fulfilled. 

There is no division in the ranks of the saved, they are 
the one hundred and forty- four thousand, that is the 
spiritual Israel of the olden and the newer times. 

What has become of the four horses, the four great 
giants, "standing on the four corners of the earth," and 
"bound in the great river" of worldly commerce, spiritually 
called Euphrates, and elsewhere described as being com- 
posed entirely of eyes, and having each six wings? It is 
here we meet with them again and the explanation of their 
change, so that while they bear the outward signs of beasts 
such as are chosen to rule world governments, they are 
standing before the temple and tabernacle of God, to give 
the bowls of the wrath of God to the Christian messengers 
to pour out upon the sources and roots of sin. 

We read : "After this I saw the temple of the tabernacle 
of the testimony in Heaven was opened, and there came out 
from the temple the seven angels that had the seven plagues, 
arrayed with precious stones, pure and bright, and girt about 
their breasts with golden girdles. And one of the four 
living creatures gave unto the seven messengers the seven 
bowls full of the wrath of God, who liveth forever " 

The temple was filled with the glory of God, even as 
when the temple of Solomon was dedicated, and was so per- 
vasive, and will be again, when one can not tell whether one 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 145 

is in the temple or outside, for glory fills the earth and the 
Kingdom of Heaven has come, the two witnesses have 
awakened, the woman has come out of the wilderness, the 
temple has risen again from the feet of the down treading 
gentile nations. 

That these seven messengers refer to the apostles is 
manifest, for they follow in the track of the trumpets, and 
if the trumpets represent the apostles surely these are the 
same and to whom Christ promised they should judge 
Israel in the regeneration. At the first they stood before 
God to receive trumpets, now the bowls of wrath are given 
to them by the world powers themselves in the regeneration. 
One of the four living creatures passes the bowls of wrath 
to them, and then comes the voice from Heaven saying, "Go 
ye and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God into 
the earth." 

They visit that wrath upon the places they had sounded 
their trumpets. And He at last repeats as to the world the 
last words from the cross, "It is finished." 

As the wrath of the dragon world had its highest expres- 
sion in Christ's words on the cross so now the greatest 
element of evil powers repeats the words "It is finished." 

In this crowning prelude to the avengers we see the 
meaning of those four living creatures called "beasts" in 
the common translation, but the "living ones" in the new. 
It is following this scene that we find Christ again on the 



146 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

white horse leading His victorious army into the new Jeru- 
salem and to the marriage supper of the Lamb, followed by 
his full retenue of the hundred and forty-four thousand, all 
on white horses fresh from the battle of Armageddon. These 
kings are to bring their glory into the Holy City. There 
the nations are to enter, there the streets are paved with 
gold and the foundations of the city are of precious stones, 
there is to be the marriage supper of the Lamb and joy 
unspeakable to see the devouring of the flesh of kings and 
captains and mighty men, given for the feast of buzzards 
expressed in the figures of a litteral battle field. 

We have quite lost sight of the church. The higher and 
broader symbols are employed, as the "temple of the taber- 
nacle in Heaven," is that out of which the avenging angels 
proceed. Who that has grasped Christ our Lord in the 
heights of his vision has not felt shame from seeing the 
petty sectarianism which marks its followers with its own 
brand. The church is an impersonal thing, a mere abstrac- 
tion incidental to the introduction of Christianity and its 
spread, which shows, however, how soon it was so cor- 
rupted in those churches that were dying even under the 
care of those who knew Christ in person. If we can see 
that our revival of the early church has now shown its 
weakness, are we not admonished by the Spirit to the course 
of a larger pattern ? 

Our state is not heathen as it was when the doctrine of 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 147 

"seperation of church and state" gave a new opportunity, 
nor is the church what it was then ? Patriotism is devotion 
to an impersonal entity governed usually by a few strong 
men, and is not the church the same in this respect, and do 
not such impersonal abstractions cultivate a kind of idolatry ? 

The church has already turned over too much of its trust 
to the state in the care of the poor and the education of the 
young. Now that the nations have looked into "the pit of 
the abyss" of war and famine and pestilence, in which so 
many millions have gone down, and have turned to look for 
the dawn of a better day, we might lay aside our apathy and 
indifference toward the Revelation which God gave to Christ 
to show to His servants. 

John says that when this time comes the temple will be 
so filled with the smoke of incense that all about it will be 
so that one will not know whether he is inside or on the out- 
side of the Kingdom of Heaven. 

When John saw the end of this glorious time he says he 
looked for the temple, and there was no temple, for God and 
the Lamb are the light of the city and that God said, "I will 
tabernacle with you." 

When the sun rises the stars all go out. 

When the viols of wrath have been given to the avenging 
messengers there comes a voice from out the temple saying : 
"Go your ways and pour out the wrath of God upon the 
earth." Then they proceed to their task and there lies 



148 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

between the sixth and seventh a supplement that the three 
unclean spirits dragon, beast and false prophet, like frogs 
go forth to the battle gathering up all the beastly forces to 
be overthrown in the war which the Lamb makes against 
them. 

The viols of wrath now follow the track of the trumpets 
in the judgments of God till the voice comes from Heaven, 
and from him who once in expiring on the cross said, "It is 
finished." Here he repeats those words meaning Christ has 
won the victory, He has become King of Kings and Lord 
of Lords. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 149 

CHAPTER XVII. 

General Supplement. Judgments Upon the False Church 
Created by the False Prophet 

1. And there came one of the seven angels that had the seven 
bowls, and spake with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the 
judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters; 

2. With whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and they 
that dwell in the earth were made drunken with the wine of her fornica- 
tion. 

3. And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness: and I 
saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blas- 
phemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 

4. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked 
with gold and precious stone and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup 
full of abominations, even the unclean things of her fornication, 

5. And upon her forehead a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON 
THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE HARLOTS AND OF THE 
ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. 

6. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and 
with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered 
with a great wonder. 

7. And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou wonder? I will 
tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, 
which hath the seven heads and the ten horns. 

8. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and is about to come 
up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. And they that dwell on 
the earth shall wonder, they whose name hath not been written in the 
book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast, 
how that he was, and is not, and shall come. 

9. Here is the mind that hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven 
mountains, on which the woman sitteth: 



150 THE KING'S TRUMPET 



10. And they are seven kings; the five are fallen, the one is, the 
other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a little 
while. 

11. And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, 
and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition. 

12. And the ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings, who have 
received no kingdom as yet; but they receive authority as kings, with 
the beast, for one hour. 

13. These have one mind, and they give their power and authority 
unto the beast. 

14. These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall over- 
come them, for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings; and they also 
shall overcome that are with him, called and chosen and faithful. 

15. And he saith unto me. The waters which thou sawest, where the 
harlot sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. 

16. And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall 
hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her 
flesh, and shall burn her utterly with fire. 

17. For God did put in their hearts to do his mind, and to come to 
one mind, and to give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of 
God should be accomplished. 

18. And the woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which 
reigneth over the kings of the earth. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



1. After these things I saw another angel coming down out of heaven, 
having great authority; and the earth was lightened with his glory. 

2. And he cried with a mighty voice, saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon 
the great, and is become a habitation of demons, and a hold of every 
unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird. 

3. For by the wine of the wrath of her fornication all the nations are 
fallen; and the kings of the earth committed fornication with her, and the 
merchants of the earth waxed rich by the power of her wantonness. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 151 

4. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come forth, my 
people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye 
receive not of her plagues: 

5. For her sins have reached even unto heaven, and God hath remem- 
bered her iniquities. 

6. Render unto her even as she rendered, and double unto her the 
double according to her works: in the cup which she mingled, mingle 
unto her double. 

7. How much soever she glorified herself, and waxed wanton, so much 
give her of torment and mourning: for she saith in her heart, I sit a 
queen, and am no widow, and shall in no wise see mourning. 

8. Therefore in one day shall her plagues come, death, and mourning, 
and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the 
Lord God who judged her. 

9. And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived 
wantonly with her, shall weep and wail over her, when they look upon 
the smoke of her burning. 

10. Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Woe, woe, 
the great city, Babylon, the strong city! for in one hour is thy judgment 
come. 

Bankrupt Sale of Ecclesiastical Harlotry and Mock 
Religious Junk 

11. And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, for no 
man buyeth their merchandise any more; 

12. Merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stone, and pearls, 
and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet; and all thyine wood, and 
every vessel of ivory, and every vessel made of most precious wood, and 
of brass, and iron, and marble; 

13. And cinnamon, and spice, and incense, and ointment, and frank- 
incense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and cattle, and 
sheep; and merchandise of horses and chariots and slaves; and souls of 
men. 



152 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

14. And the fruits which thy soul lusted after are gone from thee, 
and all things that were dainty and sumptuous are perished from thee, 
and men shall find them no more at all. 

15. The merchants of these things, who were made rich by her, shall 
stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and mourning; 

16. Saying, Woe, woe, the great city, she that was arrayed in fine 

linen and purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stone 
and pearl! 

17. For in one hour so great riches is made desolate. And every 
shipmaster, and every one that saileth any whither, and mariners, and as 
many as gain their living by sea, stood afar off, 

18. And cried out as they looked upon the smoke of her burning, 
saying, What city is like the great city? 

19. And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and mourn- 
ing, saying, Woe, woe, the great city, wherein all that had their ships 
in the sea were made rich by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is 
she made desolate. 

20. Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye saints, and ye apostles, 
and ye prophets; for God hath judged your judgment on her. 

21. And a strong angel took up a stone as it were a great millstone 
and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with a mighty fall shall Babylon, 
the great city, be cast down, and shall be found no more at all. 

22. And the voice of harpers and minstrels and flute-players and 
trumpeters shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of 
whatsoever craft, shall be found any more at all in thee; and the voice of 
a mill shall be heard no more at all in thee; 

23. And the light of a lamp shall shine no more at all in thee; and 
the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all 
in thee: for thy merchants were the princes of the earth; for with thy 
sorcery were all the nations deceived. 

24. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and 
of all that have been slain upon the earth. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 153 

CHAPTER XIX 

1. After these things I heard as it were a great voice of a great 
multitude in heaven, saying, 

Hallelujah; Salvation, and glory, and power, belong to our 
God: 

2. For true and righteous are his judgments; for he hath 
judged the great harlot, her that corrupted the earth with 
her fornication, and he hath avenged the blood of his ser- 
vants at her hand. 

3. And a second time they say, Hallelujah. And her smoke goeth up 
for ever and ever. 

4. And the four and twenty elders and the four living creatures fell 
down and worshipped God that sitteth on the throne, saying, Amen; 
Hallelujah. 

5. And a voice came forth from the throne, saying, 

Give praise to our God, all ye his servants, ye that fear 
him, the small and the great. 

6. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the 
voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, 

Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth. 

7. Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let us give the 
glory unto him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and 
his wife hath made herself ready. 

8. And it was given unto her that she should array herself 
in fine linen, bright and pure: for the fine linen is the 
righteous acts of the saints. 

9. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden 
to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are 
true words of God. 

10. And I fell down before his feet to worship him. And he saith 
unto me, See thou do it not: I am a fellow-servant with thee and with 
thy brethren that hold the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testi- 
mony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. 



154 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

11. And I saw the heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and 
he that sat thereon called Faithful and True; and in righteousness he 
doth judge and make war. 

12. And his eyes are a flame of fire, and upon his head are many- 
diadems; and he hath a name written which no one knoweth but he 
himself. 

13. And he is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood: and his 
name is called The Word of God. 

14. And the armies which are in heaven followed him upon white 
horses, clothed in fine linen, white and pure. 

15. And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that with it 
he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: 
and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God, the 
Almighty. 

16. And he hath on his garment and on his thigh a name written, 
KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. 

17. And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a 
loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in mid heaven, Come and be 
gathered together unto the great supper of God; 

18. That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, 
and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of them that 
sit thereon, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, and small and 
great. 

19. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, 
gathered together to make war against him that sat upon the horse, and 
against his army. 

20. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that 
wrought the signs in his sight, wherewith he deceived them that had 
received the mark of the beast and them that worshipped his image: they 
two were cast alive into the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone: 

21. And the rest were killed with the sword of him that sat upon the 
horse, even the sword which came forth out of his mouth: and all the 
birds were filled with their flesh. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 155 



CHAPTER XX. 

Christ's Retaliation in Kind to Seize Satan and Imprison and 
Overthrow Him in a Thousand Fold Measure 

1. And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key 
of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. 

2. And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the 
Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, 

3. And cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him, 
that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years 
should be finished: after this he must be loosed for a little time. 

4. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was 
given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded 
for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and such as wor- 
shipped not the beast, neither his image, and received not the mark upon 
their forehead and upon their hand; and they lived, and reigned with 
Christ a thousand years. 

5. The rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be 
finished. This is the first resurrection. 

6. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: 
over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of 
God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. 

7. And when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed 
out of his prison, 

8. And shall come forth to deceive the nations which are in the four 
corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the 
war: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. 

9. And they went up over the breadth of the earth, and compassed 
the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down 
out of heaven, and devoured them. 

10. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire 
and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet; and they 
shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. 



156 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

11. And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon it, from 
whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no 
place for them. 

12. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before 
the throne; and books were opened: and another book was opened, which 
is the book of life and the dead were judged out of the things which 
were written in the books, according to their works. 

13. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and 
Hades gave up the dead that were in them: and they were judged every 
man according to their works. 

14. And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is 
the second death, even the lake of fire. 

15. And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was 

cast into the lake of fire. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



1. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and 
the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more. 

2. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of 
heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 

3. And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the 
tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they 
shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their 
God: 

4. And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death 
shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, 
any more: the first things are passed away. 

5. And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things 
new. And he saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true. 

6. And he said unto me, They are come to pass. I am the Alpha 
and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that 
is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 157 

7. He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his 
God, and he shall be my son. 

8. But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murder- 
ers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part 
shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the 
second death. 

9. And there came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls, 
who were laden with the seven last plagues; and he spake with me, say- 
ing, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb. 

10. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and 
high, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of 
heaven from God, 

11. Having the glory of God: her light was like unto a stone most 
precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal: 

12. Having a wall great and high; having twelve gates, and at the 
gates twelve angels; and names written thereon, which are the names 
of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: 

13. On the east were three gates; and on the north three gates; 
and on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. 

14. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them 
twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. 

15. And he that spake with me had for a measure a golden reed 
to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. 

16. And the city lieth foursquare, and the length thereof is as 
great as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve 
thousand furlongs: the length and the breadth and the height thereof 
are equal. 

17. And he measured the wall thereof, a hundred and forty and 
four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of an angel. 

18. And the building of the wall thereof was jasper: and the city 
was pure gold, like unto pure glass. 



158 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

19. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all 
manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, 
sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; 

20. The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; 
the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase; the eleventh, 
jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst. 

21. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; each one of the several 
gates was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it 
were transparent glass. 

22. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God the Almighty, and 
the Lamb, are the temple thereof. 

23. And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to 
shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof 
is the Lamb. 

24. And the nations shall walk amidst the light thereof: and the 
kings of the earth bring their glory into it. 

25. And the gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by day (for there 
shall be no night there) : 

26. And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations 
into it: 

27. And there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he 
that maketh an abomination and a lie: but only they that are written 
in the Lamb's book of life. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



1. And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, pro- 
ceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, 

2. In the midst of the street thereof. And on this side of the river 
and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits, yielding 
its fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of 
the nations. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 159 

3. And there shall be no curse any more: and the throne of God and 
of the Lamb shall be therein: and his servants shall serve him; 

4. And they shall see his face; and his name shall be on their fore- 
heads. 

5. And there^ shall be night no more; and they need no light of lamp, 
neither light of sun; for the Lord God shall give them light: and they 
shall reign for ever and ever. 

6. And he said unto me, These words are faithful and true: and the 
Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to show unto 
his servants the things which must shortly come to pass. 

7. And behold. I come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth the words 
of the prophecy of this book. 

8. And I, John, am he that heard and saw these things. And when 
I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel that 
showed me these things. 

9. And he saith unto me, See thou do it not: I am a fellow-servant 
with thee and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them that keep 
the words of this book: worship God. 

The Open Letters to the Churches Not To Be Sealed 

10. And he saith unto me, Seal not up the words of the prophecy 
of this book; for the time is at hand. 

11. He that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness still: and he 
that is filthy, let him be made filthy still: and he that is righteous, let 
him do righteousness still: and he that is holy, let him be made holy still. 

12. Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render 
to each man according as his work is. 

13. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the 
beginning and the end. 



160 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

14. Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the 
right to come to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into 
the city. 

15. Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, 
and the murderers, and the idolaters, and every one that loveth and 
maketh a lie. 

16. I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things 
for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright, 
the morning star. 

17. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, 
let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come: he that will, 
let him take the water of life freely. 

18. I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy 
of this book, If any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him 
the plagues which are written in this book: 

19. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book 
of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and 
out of the holy city, which are written in this book. 

20. He who testifieth these things saith, Yea: I come quickly. 
Amen: come, Lord Jesus. 

21. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with the saints. Amen. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 161 

THE JUDGMENTS. 

Judgment of The Great Harlot. Ch. 17. 

What remains of the book is concerning judgments and 
is supplementary and secondary. The bowls of wrath ex- 
presses the general judgments upon the sources of sin, and 
what follows takes up the special lines. 

One of the seven angels which had the bowls of wrath 
spoke to John and said to him, "Come up here, and I will 
show you the judgment of the great harlot." John astounded, 
saw her sitting upon the great beast, drunk with the blood 
of saints. She sits upon the beast and upon the many waters, 
that is "the peoples, tribes, tongues and nations," and she 
sits upon the seven hills, governments, in short she presides 
over all that is usurped and claimed by that dragon and beast 
and false prophet, for she is their religion once expressed 
as the bride when she was clothed in all the powers of 
Heaven, now fallen. 

All that the church was in the beginning to all the powers 
of God, that the harlot is to the powers of earth and hell. 
She brings down the merchants and rich men and captains, 
and corrupts the peoples of the earth. 

The prediction is that the kings and worldlings shall do 
her bidding, and that the kings shall at length turn against 
her and "utterly burn her with fire." She answers spirit- 
ually to "the great city" Sodom, and Egypt and Babylon. 
The great beast who bears her is further described as "he 



162 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

that was and is not," the same that ascends out of the bot- 
tomless pit and that fell from Heaven, being cast out by 
Christ and is doomed to perdition. The attempt of inter- 
preters to find ten kingdoms in the Roman empire is amiss 
of the intent, for it is the symbol ten that is meant which is 
seen in the ten horns of the dragon and the beast simulating 
the ten commands of the law of God by Moses, the sign of 
civil authority, as seven is of spiritual and creative power. 
Incidently there may have been ten divisions in the Roman 
possessions, but it is not intended to find numeral identifica- 
tion any more than Daniel's four monarchies were so in- 
tended, for some historians point out there were five such 
governments, and if the number had been five or ten the 
symbol meaning would still be four, the fixed and compre- 
hensive sign of what belongs to the world order. 

This whole system of parody and burlesque which fol- 
lows all attempts to carry the kingdom over into an uncon- 
verted world is made easy enough to understand by the 
strong arraignment of the two spirits, which play behind 
them, and which call for the greatest study and watchful- 
ness, not only toward the institutions which men have 
created, but upon the soul of every one conscious, as every 
one is, that the conflict between the fleshly lusts and the 
hungering for the eternal life is to be fought out in one's own 
choice. We are to carry the spiritual victory into world 
administration also. 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 163 

There is no settlement yet of the question of the separa- 
tion of church and state. The slogan of the times served in 
a way to separate the church from the state, for they were 
both unworthy. They were doomed, and democracy has 
changed the state and the church, which has so generally 
followed the state, has improved, but the land of the birth of 
protestantism has given to the world a very informing lesson. 
It is not any one church nor any one state that we see in this 
account, but is autocracy in statecraft and harlotry in the 
churches, that is aimed at and can be studied in the letters 
to the churches where the process of backsliding was going 
on. 

A broad light on the Revelation may do for this time 
what the restoration of Paul's ministry and letters did for 
the Reformation, now old and decrepid. 

HALLELUJAH. 

The Hallelujah over the judgments of the harlot and 
her suiters, and followed by the marriage of the Lamb, and 
last of all His judgments on the dragon is the order of the 
Chs. 18-19. 

The harlot, made in the image of the beast and the 
dragon, and accepted and obeyed and followed by "them 
that dwell upon the earth," who have not "the seal of God 
in the forehead," comes in for the first and severest con- 
demnation. The princes and kings and mariners desert her, 



164 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

and a bankrupt sale follows, and there is offered for sale and 
no one found any longer to buy her merchandise, her 
ecclesiastical trinkets, her tawdry apparels, nor to drink from 
her cup. Then we are told that the rulers themselves turn 
against her and "burn her utterly with fire." God has called 
his children to come out of her that they may not partake of 
her sins and her judgments. 

Then comes the war against the beast and the false 
prophet that created the harlot. Then follows the Halle- 
lujahs of the saints. 

"I heard a great voice of many people in Heaven, say- 
ing 'Hallelujah!' Salvation and glory and honor and power 
unto the Lord our God, for true and righteous are His 
judgments, for He hath judged the great whore which did 
corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the 
blood of His servants at her hand. And again they said 
Hallelujah! and her smoke rose up forever and ever. And 
the four and twenty elders, and the four living ones fell 
down and worshipped God, who sat on the great white 
throne, saying Amen, Hallelujah! And a voice came out of 
the throne saying: Praise our God all ye His servants and 
ye that fear Him both small and great ; and I heard as it 
were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of 
many waters and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying 
Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let 
us rejoice and be glad and give honor to Him, for the 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 165 

marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride hath made 
herself ready, and to her it was granted that she should be 
arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is 
the righteousness of saints." 

At this invitation John falls at the feet of the angel guide 
and offers to worship, but is restrained from such an act and 
is told to worship God. 

John then turns to witness the marriage cortage and 
describes "the King of kings and Lord of lords," seated 
upon the white horse now followed, not by a red horse with 
sword, but by His own conquering army returning from the 
battle of Armageddon, which began on the day of Pentecost 
and has to be ended in the vindication of His claims to rule 
in Heaven and on earth. 

Upon His head is His golden crown which has in it the 
many diadems of conquest. Upon His garment, and in- 
scribed on His thigh is His banner, "King of kings and Lord 
of lords" and the words of His mouth are as a sharp two 
edged sword. A description of the holy city follows, and 
the coming of the bride from Heaven to the high moun- 
tain, then of dominion over all. 

John saw his Master standing in the sun, being the 
bright morning star, and then he calls up the buzzards to 
have their feast on the carcasses of the kings and rich men, 
and the masters and their servants, bond and free. 

Then John saw the beast and the kings of the earth and 



166 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

their followers, and the false prophet that had been de- 
feated, cast into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, 
all the devil's forces except Satan, who is the last to be 
overthrown. 

THE THOUSAND YEARS. 

It is in this supplemental part of the Revelation we meet 
with "The Thousand Years" which has caused much contro- 
versy among interpreters. 

It stands therefore quite apart from those programs 
which are fashioned upon articulate plans which are the 
guide posts to the reader's mind. 

It is not a thousand years as our solar division of time, 
but it is the thousand years "an idiomatic phrase which gets 
its explanation from other references at hand. It has no 
references to solar or luner time at all. The attempts to 
connect Daniel's calendars with "the thousand years" seems 
to be a total failure and inspires no just confidence. 

The broad sense of the situation is in regarding the 
struggle between the two antagonistic sources, which we 
have been canvassing as officially matched against each 
other. The evil powers are an evil replica against the 
heavenly by agencies that imitate and oppose and destroy. 

As the heavenly powers act as cotemporary and in unit, 
so do the evil powers. The two witnesses are said to be in 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 167 

sackcloth, "twelve hundred and sixty days," and that they 
arose as from the dead after the "three days and a half." 

That forces us to see that the two forms express the same 
time and not two times. We turn to the church Ch. 12 and 
read that the woman "fled into the wilderness" where she is 
kept for "the twelve hundred and sixty days" and that she 
is there "the time, times and half time" that is "the three 
days and a half." It is easy to see that with the testimony 
(the two witnesses) put to death the church would be in the 
same condition, for the church was produced by the testi- 
mony. The implication is unavoidable, but justifies the 
appeal "to him that hath wisdom, he that hath understand- 
ing," to use them. 

But the church is also* called "the holy city," which the 
nations tread under foot for "the forty and two months" 
which is one and the same time, and so together we have 
the four forms of expression for one and the same time, 
rather say the same condition. Our common sense shows us 
that these heavenly powers are not set in any way against 
each other. They are one. Then we inquire on the other 
side to find that the great beast has dominion "the forty- 
two months," and his time is of necessity that of the dragon 
also, and of all the adverse forces, and that is also expressed 
when we read that the dragon "is wroth," knowing that he 
hath but "a short time," which is the same time and no other. 
Again Christ is represented as saying to the souls under the 



168 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

altar that they are to wait "a little while," which expresses 
the same time, that is the time the brutal powers shall reign, 
till the Kingdom of God comes into the ascendent, and the 
evil beast dominion shall serve our "Prince of the kings of 
the earth." This connection is close, for the fifth seal in 
which Christ makes the promise is followed by the sixth 
which shows the kings and captains and the rich men, 
"hiding from the face of God and from the wrath of the 
Lamb." 

Now taking these forms of numeral signs we have : 

The twelve hundred and sixty days. 

The forty-two months. 

The three days and a half. 

The time, times and a half time. That is the four, the 
symbol that pertains to world affairs in every connection and 
is employed to set forth the condition of beastly rule till the 
spiritual rule rises into the ascendent. 

This is made plainer yet when we read in Ch. 9:15, that 
the horsemen who are let loose (let us say in the battle of 
Armageddon, which began on the day of Pentecost) — loosed 
to destroy as do the locusts from the pit (in the fifth trum- 
pet) that it is there distinctly stated that "The horses were 
prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year." 
The four time words not being used as solar measures at all 
but the sign as the proper names are used when we are told 
that "our Lord was crucified in the great city spiritually 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 169 



called Sodom and Egypt." He was crucified in Jerusalem, 
which became as Sodom and Egypt, and by metonomy the 
"great city" was Rome called Babylon, and so we have the 
sign of four again as in the four living creatures, four horses, 
four angels, on the four corners of the earth, and the ever 
recurring "tribes, tongues, and peoples and nations," and so 
far from any attempt to bring in solar measures by our 
almanacs we read that the company of the redeemed are 
said to be the ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands 
of thousands, and the hundred and forty- four thousand, 
and a multitude that no man can number. In this sign of 
three it means the saved of all nations and all times the total 
of the redeemed. The group of three is Heavenly victories 
in all the programs. 

It is this synthetic method of teaching which calls for 
the constructive and creative faculties of the mind the book 
invokes, and which this time deeply needs in spiritual con- 
templation after the ravages of the analytic and destructive 
method led by Germany, the highest educated of nations, 
and that relegated the Revelation of Jesus Christ to the 
lowest place. Analysis is destroying, and the dragon is 
called the destroyer. Can we now take Christianity most 
directly from Christ Himself and so begin the new execu- 
tive synthetic age ? 

When we are told in this supplement that Christ is to 
reign a thousand years, and that his saints are to reign with 



170 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

him, Ch. 22 :5, They shall "reign forever and ever," that is 
with Christ and with God, Ch. 21 :3 ; that is "the thousand 
years." Are there to be two reigns of Christ ? 

When the tide turns it turns forever and the two wit- 
nesses arise from sackcloth, and the dead, and the woman 
comes out of the wilderness and the souls come from under 
the altar to sit with Christ on the throne, and the Kingdom 
of God will have come as a bride and the dragon will be 
cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, "where the beast 
and the false prophet are." Ch. 20:10. Do the beast and 
false prophet go a thousand years ahead of the dragon? 

What a hard task it is to force the hand of God to make 
it conform to a complex system evolved by a juggling of 
texts by over heated minds, and to take this thousand years, 
which means forever and ever, and flash before the world 
in our day as a mathematically accurate computation of a 
fixed time, and when the times have passed and the predic- 
tions not fulfilled, to make a Mahommedan miracle of it by 
saying the Almighty changed His mind, and since the moun- 
tain does not come to these prophets they will go to the 
mountain. 

The oath of Christ is recorded that with the sounding 
of the seventh trumpet the Kingdom of Heaven will be pro- 
claimed. 

Coming closer to this passage, Ch. 20, we see in it the 
last great judgment visited upon Satan, the dragon, the old 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 171 

serpent, called the devil, Abaddon and Appollyon, and 
"king of the locusts," and that its forms belong to the coun- 
terparts when the tables are turned. That is as Satan 
arrested Christ and wickedly put Him to death, and shut 
Him up in the tomb three days, from which He rose to 
justification, and to reign forever, so now judging the 
harlot to be "utterly burnt with fire" and the great beast 
and the false prophet and the kings and princes and rich 
and great with them, then Christ Himself in the dramatic 
forms of retaliation in the last and greatest judgment seizes 
Satan and binds him and seals him up in the darker prison, 
from which he is released, as Christ was, for "the little 
while" to condemnation, a punishment a thousand times 
greater than Christ who Himself being "the first resurrec- 
tion" rose to Glory, and then as Christ ascended to Heaven 
to sit on the right hand of God forever, Satan is thrown into 
the lake of fire and brimstone himself, and his kingdom for- 
ever destroyed. 

These judgments that begin with Ch. 17, and this bind- 
ing of Satan is an official act in retaliation in harmony with 
the sixth seal, where the prayers of the souls under the altar 
are avenged in the forms of the crucifixion of Christ. Here 
as there the judgment is stressed on a tremendous scale. 
Christ was punished for telling the truth and Satan is pun- 
ished a thousand times worse and put to eternal shame. 
After Christ arose from the dead He was here "a little 



172 THE KING'S TRUMPET 

while," a form of expression spoken of three or four times 
in John's gospel, and nowhere else, and made the subject of 
comment, is the same expression used on the imitation of 
the satanic force which assumes to administer the gospel 
and to be its custodian, and must perish with that image 
which the false prophet made of the beast and dragon which 
pretended to own the Pentecost that brought down fire from 
Heaven. 

But we read in the book of Revelation that here is a 
special blessing to "him that hath part in the first resur- 
rection." 

But these blessings are interspersed through the book 
and here they are in a program to themselves as the seven. 

"Blessed is he that readeth and they who hear and keep 
the words of the prophecy of this book." 

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth, 
Yea saith the Spirit that they may rest from their labors, 
and their works do follow them." 

"Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments 
lest he walk naked, and they see his shame." 

"Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper 
of the Lamb." 

"Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resur- 
rection, over these the second death has no power." 

"Blessed is he that keepeth the prophecy of this book." 



THE KING'S TRUMPET 173 

"Blessed are they who have washed their robes that they 
may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through 
the gates into the city." 

Here are the seven beatitudes corresponding to the seven 
promises in the seven letters to the churches, and responsive 
to those spoken in the sermon on the Mount. 

Now let us ask : Do those who die in the Lord belong 
to a different class, or are they in any way different from 
those who have part in "the first resurrection?" Are they 
who are bidden to the marriage feast of the Lamb in any 
way different from those who die in the Lord? Or do 
those who have kept their garments belong to yet another 
class ? 

The coming to the Revelation with the western hair 
splitting mind and with the analytic method of refining 
makes it impossible to the creative synthetic soul. 

It calls for the mind to look up, to detect the necessary 
implications, to note the actions and identify the actors, to 
recognize that John calls Christ by more than twenty titles 
not found elsewhere in our Bible, and that he has a great 
number of names for the church and for the apostles, and 
even of the Spirit, as "lamps of fire," as "fire," as "the seal 
of God," as "the seven Spirits," before the throne, and "the 
eyes and horns of the Lamb," and as the breath of God, 
attending Christ in the ascension, and the apostles in preach- 
ing and the saints in suffering and labors. 



174 THE KING'S TRUMPET 



John was ordered to measure the temple as it was then 
and at the last he sees the Angel measuring it "the Holy 
City." "He that spoke with me had for a measure a golden 
reed to measure the city and the gates thereof, and he 
measured the city according to the measure of the man, that 
is of the angel. " "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify 
these things to you in the churches." "The testimony of 
Jesus which is the Spirit of prophecy." 

"Blessed is he that readeth, and they who hear and keep 
the words of the prophecy of this book." 

[THE END] 



AFTER TWENTY SILENT YEARS. 
The author of this system of interpretation desires that 
many who follow the way of the Cross may form ^ jups for 
concerted study in correspondent ' ith this office, as also 
his prayer that Bible schools everywhere may give such 
attention to the subject as may justify the high appraise- 
ments which the Revelation claims for itself. 

THE AUTHOR, 

Holland, Mich. 

Ip 



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